


A Multiverse Affair

by dirigibleplumbing



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe Avengers, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Darcy Lewis - Freeform, Evil Steve Rogers, Getting Together, Insecure Tony Stark, M/M, Minor Bruce Banner/Betty Ross, Minor Bruce Banner/Natasha Romanov, Minor Jane Foster/Thor, Multiverse, POV Tony Stark, Pining, Praise Kink, Steve Rogers is Not a Virgin, Switch Tony Stark, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, and lots of everyone really, and lots of other Steve Rogers, brief mention Clint Barton / Kurt Wagner (don’t worry about it), discussion of Dom/sub, dubcon, polyamory sort of cuz it’s just the same people from different universe, switch steve rogers, the dubcon is between Tony and a Steve but it’s an evil Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-08 05:44:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14098524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleplumbing/pseuds/dirigibleplumbing
Summary: Avengers tower is filling with multiples of the whole team from other universes, and other people besides. Tony thinks he’s starting to get a handle on the situation, until a duplicate Steve Rogers invites him to his room to talk.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in an ambiguous time after _Iron Man 3_ but before _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ , though it still contains hellof spoilers for the latter, due to multiverse shenanigans. In the official MCU timeline, there’s less than a year between these two movies, but in this it’s probably a lot longer. All the Avengers are living together in the tower, including Thor. There’s also some teeny-tiny things that could be considered spoilers for _Age of Ultron_ , if you’re really, really concerned about staying spoiler-free.
> 
> I am solidly an MCU person—I haven’t read a single comic with any of these characters. But since it’s fanfic, the Avengers in this piece know and sometimes work with or against the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Deadpool, and their villains. 
> 
> Thank you to the amazing [dasyatidae](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dasyatidae/pseuds/dasyatidae) for beta!
> 
> The primary pairing is Steve/Tony, all the way, across the multiverse. There’s some very background Thor/Jane and some mentioned, past, or background Bruce/Betty Ross, and Bruce/Natasha. 
> 
> Content note: there is an evil Steve who is not good to his Tonys. Warnings for emotional abuse / manipulation and a dubcon scene wherein they reach third base. The distinction of dubcon vs. noncon in this scene is difficult for me to pin down, but I’m currently leaning on the dubcon side of things because, while Tony is giving clear nonverbal cues that evil-Steve should be able to interpret, when Tony does eventually verbalize an explicit negative, evil-Steve stops. Still not okay, obviously! But it’s not the real Steve, I promise; real Steve is good and he and Tony will live happily ever after.

The team was having breakfast together in Bryant Park, the bagels were dwindling, and the reflection on the fountain nearby was blinding even through Tony’s sunglasses. He and Bruce were winding down an animated discussion of Tetrodotoxin B when Tony's eyes wandered to Steve, who was being quieter than usual and concentrating on his sketchbook. "Whatcha drawing?"

Immediately, Steve slammed the little moleskine shut and stuffed it in his jeans pocket, frowning and avoiding Tony's eyes. "Nothing."

Couldn't even make small talk with the guy. "Shit, just trying to be friendly, Captain Cold."

Steve's face changed, and Tony berated himself for managing to find a way to remind Steve of his time as a Capsicle. The swearing probably hadn't helped either. "It's from a comic," Tony started to explain. “He has this gun that shoots cold rays, it’s supposed to slow down molecules or something. He’s not a captain at all, really —”

“I get it,” Steve said, looking sour.

“Anyway, you’re the one who’s always saying it’s rude for me to look at my phone during team dinners,” Tony complained. He winced inwardly — great subject change, Stark, insinuating Steve was a rude hypocrite. Just perfect, really.

“That’s different. I can draw and still have a conversation. When you’re on the phone, you’re usually talking to someone else, when we’re all right there in person! And you always have to have your gadgets, when—”

“Woah, hey, no hating on the tech! And it’s called _texting_. I wouldn’t take a phone call while I was still sitting at dinner—”

“What’s the difference, then? Why is one rude and the other isn’t? And I’m not hating on the tech. I know I don’t always understand it, but I really love most of the contraptions and things you come up with—”

“Funny way of showing it,” Tony muttered.

Steve plowed on. “—I just think that sometimes you’re solving problems that aren’t really there. You might, I don’t know, build a robot to butter your toast for you, and it would take you longer than it would to just butter your own toast.”

“Okay, weird example, why is that the robot you pick for me to make?” Tony regarded Steve over the rims of his sunglasses. “And, on top of that, short-sighted and incorrect. You’re not taking into account all of the _future_ toast it could butter. Not to mention the other applications. I mean, can it only butter toast? Can it butter bagels? Can it apply cream cheese to bagels? Can it put jam on an English muffin?”

Steve rolled his eyes.

“If you add up all the time a person spends in their life putting condiments on bread products, that’s definitely worth fifteen minutes to build a buttering robot. That’s not even getting into the possible uses for a robot like that in the bedroom—”

Steve was turning red. “You’re so—so—”

Tony didn’t get to find out what he was so much of, because Bruce interrupted. Which was probably a good thing. “Uh, was that the last bagel?” Bruce asked.

Thor looked guiltily at the bagel he had just bitten into. “I will fetch more sustenance!” he offered.

“Nah, I got it,” Clint said, already standing up. “Pastries from around the corner?”

There were sounds of assent. “That place doesn’t have coffee,” Tony complained.

“Get one for me too while you’re up,” Natasha said. “You know my order.”

“Really? Hey, I already walked all the way here—”

“It’s like, four blocks,” Clint muttered.

“— _all the way here_ , and now I’m expected to walk more to get coffee?”

“Some of us have already been up for hours, gone on a jog, and taken a shower,” Steve said.

Tony didn’t let himself be distracted by thoughts of Steve in the shower. “Some of us aren’t superhuman!” he pointed out.

“I wouldn’t mind a second coffee either,” Bruce offered.

Tony rolled his eyes and sighed heavily but went for the coffee, because he and Bruce were science buds, not because Natasha terrified him or anything, and he really only needed to walk across the street. He caught up on emails on his phone while he waited in line, and almost forgot to flirt with the barista when she took his order. Lately he didn’t have eyes for anyone who wasn’t a certain tall, blond—and, oh yeah, totally uninterested—captain who shared his tower.

After weaving through commuters and park visitors, Tony was nearly back at their table when he glanced up from his phone to see Steve standing in front of him, blocking his way. “Hey, uh, if you wanted a coffee after all, you’re too late,” Tony said, trying to gesture to the cardboard tray of cups he held in his non-phone hand and sloshing the drinks around instead.

Steve plucked the tray from his hand and leaned in so his forehead rested against Tony’s. “Just came to say hi,” Steve replied, and _kissed_ him. Tony kissed back, because, hey, Steve was _kissing_ him and it was impossible not to enjoy it even while his mind reeled in confusion. He reminded himself to breathe and leaned into it, feeling Steve’s hand on his ass, tilting their hips together.

“So, uh,” Tony said when Steve released him. He should really be able to process this faster, he thought, and blamed Steve’s stupid firm lips and glorious tongue for the holdup in his brain. “That—”

“How long has _that_ been going on,” Clint said then, because apparently Clint had walked up right beside them. “Niiiice!” he said to Tony, shifting his bags from the bakery into one hand so he could hold up his other for a high-five.

Tony tried to reach out to high-five back but Steve was _holding his hand_ , and that’s when he heard Steve’s voice from yards away—which didn’t make any sense at all, because Steve was right next to him. “Who the hell are you?”

And then a handful of the people on the grass beside them doing yoga stopped to stare because Natasha and Bruce and Thor and the _other_ Steve—because there were _two Steves—_ had all stood up around their little park table. The Steve next to him stepped back as everyone tensed, going into fighting stances. Natasha had pulled out, from somewhere, a knife the length of her forearm.

“What’s going on?” the Steve nearest to Tony asked, and he realized that this one was wearing jogging clothes, and the one he’d walked to Bryant Park with—the one now holding up a metal bistro table as a shield—was wearing jeans and a baseball cap.

“I believe it is you who should be answering questions,” Thor rumbled, hefting Mjölnir.

“Let’s go back to the Tower,” Natasha said evenly. “Away from bystanders.”

“Good idea,” agreed Bruce, who had shed his jacket so he wouldn’t shred it if he transformed. “We have equipment there that can maybe… illuminate things.”

“And more weapons,” Clint added, flashing an aggressive grin at jogging-clothes Steve.

“Okay,” jeans-Steve said agreeably, at nearly the same time that jogging-Steve said “Fine,” in a more irritable tone. Jogging-Steve frowned, and jeans-Steve huffed a little.

Tony turned back to his phone to avoid darting his eyes back and forth from one to the other like a ping-pong ball, but Twitter couldn’t compete for long. Because there were _two Steves_ , twice the Steves, twice the pecs and abs and shoulders and, yeah, probably twice the impatience with Tony, but, still. The two Steves sized each other up on the short walk back to the Tower, the rest of the team flanking them. Bruce retrieved his coffee from jogging-clothes-Steve and passed the others to Tony and Natasha.

“I’m obviously the real Steve,” jogging-Steve grumbled at one point. A muscle worked in jeans-Steve’s jaw.

“So, what are we thinking, pod person? Cylon? Hydra clone?” Tony said to fill the silence.

“It could be my brother’s doing,” Thor admitted, gesturing thoughtfully with his hammer and nearly knocking it into a lamppost.

“Great, _magic,_ ” Clint muttered.

“Magic could explain why it seems like you’ve all forgotten Tony and I have been dating for months,” jogging-Steve said.

“So you, uh, both think—claim—that you’re Steve Rogers?” Bruce asked.

“Yes,” both Steves said together, then glared at each other across the sidewalk. Tony glanced between them, trying to see if he could notice any difference in the shape of their asses, or the way their hips moved when they walked. You know. For science.

“We need to question them separately,” Natasha admonished, rounding the corner and entering the main lobby.

“Oh thank God, we’re here,” Tony said, rushing them into the private Avenger’s entrance.

“My identicard is in my pocket,” said jeans-Steve, who was carefully keeping both of his empty hands visible. “Can I reach for it, or—”

“I’ve got it,” Natasha replied, and plucked it from him.

“Mine too,” said jogging-Steve, who was in a mirrored pose.

Natasha reached for his waistband and pulled out a Starkphone wrapped with white earbuds, a slot for a card built into the case. She pulled out the card and held it beside the one she’d taken from jeans-Steve. They looked identical.

“Jarvis?” Tony asked.

“Both cards register as belonging to Captain Rogers, Sir,” came the reply. “Both are up to date and have the proper security clearance. There is no sign of tampering that I can detect from here.”

“Huh,” Tony muttered. He liked to think that the identicards were unhackable, but he’d made mistakes before. “Let’s all go up, shall we, and see what we can learn up there.”

“As you say, Sir. To what level shall I take you?”

“Let’s go to my lab, Jarvis,” Bruce suggested. “There’s not too much that could be, ah, used as a weapon, and there’s more medical equipment there.”

“This is kind of a terrible evil plan,” Clint said on the elevator ride up. “Someone makes a double of Steve and a perfect copy of his identicard, and instead of infiltrating the Tower or getting us separately he—gropes Tony? Interrupts our breakfast in the park?”

“Aye, it is unclear what the tactical advantage might be,” Thor agreed, thoughtful.

“I don’t suppose I could get in on the breakfast part?” jogging-Steve asked, eyeing Clint’s bakery bag. “I haven’t eaten yet.”

“It doesn’t seem right to starve our prisoner,” Natasha smirked.

“That was going to be _my_ bear claw,” jeans-Steve grumbled, but it sounded a bit half-hearted.

“You could arm wrestle for it,” Tony suggested.

“ _Tony_ ,” jeans-Steve admonished, and jogging-Steve rolled his eyes but quirked a half-smile.

Before Tony had time to expound on the topic of the two Captain Americas comparing their strength, they reached Bruce’s floor and the two Steves were shuffled off to various pieces of equipment. “I’ll brief Fury,” Natasha said, taking out her phone. “Thor, Clint, keep an eye on our Steves. Tony, you gonna suit up or help out Bruce?”

“Pardon the interruption,” Jarvis said. “But Dr. Foster and two guests have arrived. They are on their way to join you.”

“Jane!” Thor beamed. Then his face fell into a frown. “There is some trickery at play here. I spoke to her not one hour ago—she is currently in Iceland, attending a scientific conference with Dr. Selvig.”

“Jarvis,” Tony said slowly. “Who are the two guests?”

“Ms. Darcy Lewis and a woman identified as Dr. Betty Ross. Shall I halt the elevator, Sir?” Jarvis asked.

“Betty?” Bruce’s eyes were wide and he stood frozen over the Steve whose mouth he was swabbing.

“I’m getting a SHIELD team over here to escort us all to headquarters,” Natasha announced to the room, typing into her phone. “Jarvis, let them up, and keep us apprised of any other guests.”

“Certainly, Ms. Romanoff.”

“Is that Ross, like, any relation to Lieutenant General Ross?” Clint asked. He had a handgun out now, a small thing he’d no doubt had stashed somewhere, which he pointed at the elevator.

“Shut it,” Natasha hissed, sparing a glance for Bruce, who was backing away and shaking his head. Huh. That couldn’t be good.

The elevator dinged. Natasha and Clint were both pointing their guns at it. Thor ground his teeth and held Mjölnir aloft.

“Heyyy— _what the fuck?_ ” Darcy began and then shrieked, putting her hands in the air.

“Thor? What’s going on?” Jane asked, taking in the scene before her.

“Babe? Are you okay?” Betty asked tentatively.

“Babe? _Babe?_ Betty, I—” Bruce was still backing up, knocking into equipment and chairs as he did so, swallowing. “I haven’t seen you in _years_ , what—”

“What are you talking about? Is that—Steve?” Betty frowned. Both Steves waved.

“Sir, a—second Clint Barton is now upstairs in Mr. Barton’s quarters,” Jarvis said.

“Motherfucker,” Clint said, still pointing his gun at the elevator.

“The SHIELD team is here,” Natasha said. “Jarvis, let them in. Lock down Clint’s floor.”

“Sir?” Jarvis asked.

“Uh, you heard the lady, J,” Tony said.

 

Half an hour later, things were contained. Sort of.

Everyone was on the guest level, with each double or unidentified person in their own suite with a SHIELD escort. Five more Bruces had shown up, one with another Thor, one with another Steve, and one with another Betty, and now each Bruce was alone in a room of his own, meditating. Well, alone except for a dozen SHIELD agents per Banner, though what those guys were supposed to do if there was a Hulk-related incident, Tony didn’t have a clue. Maybe they were betting— hoping, praying—that the other Bruces were fake and couldn’t really Hulk out. Betty Ross was an ex of his, it turned out, and one of the main reasons he’d gone into hiding before the Avengers had gotten together, to protect her. One of the Bruces claimed to be dating Natasha these days—which, how had _that_ started, or, what kind of cover story was that even supposed to be? So yeah, all the Bruces were taking breathers, including the one that Tony thought of to himself as _real_ Bruce. In addition to the Jane Foster who had arrived with Darcy and Betty, one Jane had arrived with a third Thor, another with a Dr. Selvig, a fourth with a Pepper Potts (the real Pepper was in California on Stark Industries business), and a fifth with another Clint. Yet another Clint had showed up on the ground level with a Tony in full Iron Man gear (Mark 48), one more with a Rhodey (the real Rhodey was in DC), and a final Clint, Steve, and Tony had materialized in the Avengers’ dining room.

So things were contained in the sense that they were hopelessly outgunned if these guys turned out to be hostiles, and they couldn’t be totally sure which if any of the doubles were the right ones. And really, if Tony had known his morning was going to end with four solid, real life men identical in every conceivable way to Steve Rogers in his tower, he would have expected something very, very different.

Tony and some SHIELD doctors and scientists had been going over the tests that Bruce had started on the Steves and had continued conducting on everyone else. Promisingly, after an hour, and Tony had figured it out—well part of it, anyway, the beginning, which he could use to figure out the rest—using good old physics, none of that messy medicine crap. Tony sent the single Darcy present to make coffee for everyone who could be identified as a real Avenger, on the basis that whoever she was, she was claiming to be an intern and could damn well make herself useful. Then Tony gathered together the Steve, Clint, Natasha, and Thor with whom he’d had breakfast in the park earlier.

“We,” he said, indicating the five of them. “And that Bruce” —he pointed to a door— “are the real deal. Everyone else’s RNA has a different quantum signature. They’re from another universe.”

“Parallel realities?” Natasha said with something almost like a sigh.

“That explains the second Iron Man armor, and how the Thors all had working Mjölnirs,” Steve said. “Disguises are one thing, but we’d be in trouble if someone had figured out how to copy those.”

“Verily,” Thor agreed.

“So, they are who they say they are?” Clint asked.

Tony shrugged. “Uh, yeah, sure, more or less. They’re the them—the us—from the universes they’re from. They’re just in the wrong one.”

“And that doesn’t mean we can trust them,” Natasha put in.

“Right,” Tony agreed. “That’s why I’m putting together a scanner system for all entry and exit and computer access points, so we always know which, uh, whoever, is doing what and going where.”

Thor nodded. “Well done, shield brother Tony. In the meantime, what are we to do with our unexpected guests?”

“We need more intel,” Steve said. “Why is this happening? Is it just here, and just us?”

“I’ll talk to Fury,” Natasha said. “Get SHIELD’s read on this.”

“I’ll send you the files we’ve got so far,” Tony agreed.

“Everyone else, stay in the tower until Tony can get those scanners set up,” Steve commanded.

Tony headed back to work, his mind swimming with Steve Rogers. Having just one Steve in the tower was already more than Tony’s poor libido—and okay, maybe his heart too—could handle, and now there were four, and one of them had kissed him. The real one seemed to be taking it all in stride, which maybe he should have expected. Steve rarely lost his cool, and now that Tony thought of it, always kept it together in serious situations. No, it was only when arguing with Tony that Steve stopped being calm and decisive, and wasn’t that just Tony’s luck.

  


Twenty-four hours later, Tony had managed to get the scanners in place. But beyond that, he had had ten cups of coffee, two smoothies, zero hours of sleep, a lot of quantum data up on his screens, hours upon hours of interviews and interrogations with all of the doubles who had appeared, and was no closer to figuring out why they kept coming.

And keep coming they did. There were nearly a dozen of each member of the team now. Each member except for Natasha—there was still only one of her, the one native to their universe, and _that_ certainly seemed significant. Also significant: it wasn’t just the tower, and it wasn’t just the Avengers. It was certainly focused on the tower. He had a 3d map of midtown showing all of the occurrences of doubles that he and SHIELD had been able to track, and most of them were showing up in or near the tower. It was hard to say, exactly, because different people noticed at different times. There were probably dozens who hadn’t figured out yet that they were in the wrong universe, and maybe even a handful who never would. Besides the doppelgänger Avengers, mostly there were Stark Industries employees, SHIELD agents and scientists, and a few dozen civilians who were just around for one reason or another and had no connection that they could identify.

Fury had decreed that all of the Avengers, and anyone not native to their universe, be contained in Avengers Tower until further notice, and he kept sending SHIELD squadrons over to keep an eye on things.

Real-Bruce was helping Tony go over the data now, so at least he had some competent help. But he suspected it would have gone even faster if the situation weren’t so personal. None of the doubles had mentioned anything about a portal, a machine, or even a ray or a field — _anything_ unusual that could explain how they got to their universe. They were all just going about their daily lives when, plop, they were here. And their daily lives, he couldn’t even get started on those.

The jogging-pants-wearing Steve who they’d encountered first had gotten a later start than real-Steve because, apparently, his _long-term committed boyfriend_ Tony Stark had kept him busy in their _shared bedroom_ for an hour or so after they’d woken up, and, yeah, that concept wasn’t on endless repeat in his brain right now. Nor was the vision of the beet-red Steve Rogers who had explained this to a stone-faced Natasha on Tony’s screen. Nope, Tony was a professional, and didn’t have a loop of sex fantasies about his teammate who barely tolerated him, not when he had multiverses to untangle.

And that was one of the tamer differences. Besides the several doubles who were dating his estranged ex, Bruce had a double who was dating Natasha. Tony wasn’t sure which was weirder—probably the idea of dating someone who’s chosen codename across the multiverse was a reference to murdering her sexual partners. One of the Thors said that their Clint had been killed by Loki in the battle of New York. And Steve, god, _Steve_. There was a Steve who reported that in his universe, SHIELD had been infiltrated by Hyrda. So he and the Natasha there had leaked all of SHIELD/Hydra’s secrets to the public, destroyed three helicarriers, and called it a day. Oh, and Steve’s old war buddy, Bucky Barnes, was _alive_ and had been brainwashed by Hydra-slash-SHIELD to act as their assassin for decades; Barnes was the only thing _that_ Steve could talk about, for obvious reasons. That Steve had showed up with a guy named Sam Wilson, who apparently was on their team in that universe, and had caused quite a stir about being guarded by SHIELD goons. Christ.

So Tony didn’t expect it when he turned at the knock on his workshop door and it was original-flavor, home-universe Steve on the other side, bags under his eyes and defeat in his broad shoulders.

“You look like shit,” Tony said, then winced.

“Gee, thanks,” Steve said, flopping down on a couch near the array of screens Tony was working on.

“I meant, uh, are you doing okay? Are my reinforced punching bags okay?” he asked, taking in Steve’s bloodied knuckles and shower-wet hair.

“One of them didn’t make it,” Steve admitted. “But that one said something about my mother, so, he had it coming. And I came to check on you, actually?”

“Me? I’m just dandy. I got manhandled by a national icon, one of the country’s most eligible bachelors. I’m doing _great_ ,” Tony found himself saying, and regretting it. Like Steve wanted to be reminded of that right now.

“Yeah, uh, sorry about that. I mean, I talked to him. He seemed sorry about the… confusion.” Steve didn’t meet his eye.

“Uh, I was _bragging_ , have you seen you?” Tony said. “And what I meant to say is, I’m more worried about you,” he added quickly. “You went down with that plane to stop Hydra, and if they could infiltrate SHIELD in that one guy’s universe, it could happen here too.”

Steve stared at his hands.

“You wanna talk about it?” Tony asked, not daring to say Bucky’s name first.

Steve was shaking his head. “Not right now. There’s a job to do.” And that was Captain America for you. “We’ll get all the intel we can from him and Airman Wilson and look into it when we’ve unraveled this mess. We’ll keep our distance from SHIELD in the meantime, only tell them what we absolutely have to.”

Tony spread his hands. “Wish I had some results for you, Cap. But I haven’t found anything yet that gives me a single fucking clue why this is happening.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Steve said, and even as he sounded exhausted, he also sounded so _sure_. Had Tony ever been that sure about anything? “I didn’t come down here to rush you, Tony, I wanted to make sure you’re alright, see if I can do anything to help. Maybe convince you to take a break, come upstairs and have breakfast with the team?” He looked up at Tony through his excessive eyelashes. The man was so beautiful, it was just unfair. “There’s fresh coffee.”

Like Tony could say no to those eyes. Steve’s puppy-dog eyes were his goddamn kryptonite. “Fine, but I’m coming back down right after,” he insisted.

“Sure, Tony,” Steve agreed.

 

During breakfast, Steve kept hinting at how much more sense things might make if Tony just had a nap before going back to work, and Tony ignored him. Like he could sleep when this shit was happening. In the time it took them to demolish a quadruple batch of waffles and enough frittata to feed a baseball team, nearly thirty more people had appeared from other universes, half of them Avengers. Among them was a Thor with short hair, a Rhodey with prosthetic legs, a Pepper who was an Inhuman, a Tony who wore glasses, and a Clint wearing an outfit that Tony would _never_ let his Clint forget in a million years. And that was just over breakfast.

He was on his way back to the workshop when Jarvis spoke. “Sir, there is a Captain Rogers on the guest level who is very insistent on speaking with you.”

“Yeah? Lemme guess, this one wants me to get some sleep too?”

“In fact, he says he has information that you will find valuable in trying to rectify the current situation and you are the only one he will speak to about it.”

That got Tony’s attention. “Have I met this one, Jarvis?” He asked, pulling up the info on the Steve in question.

“No, Sir. He arrived earlier this morning.”

According to the file in front of him, this Steve had been reticent about what his home universe was like. Natasha had noted, though, that he had inadvertently indicated that SHIELD had fallen to Hydra in his universe, the way it had in several of the others—and didn’t _that_ bode well. Though most of the other Steves were much more cooperative and eager to be of help, this one hadn’t raised any red flags.

“Where’d he show up?”

“In your quarters, Sir. He was unaccompanied. He has since been brought to a suite of guest quarters, like our other callers.”

A few months prior, Tony and Bruce had put their heads together and come up with contingency plans for if any member of their team became compromised. Veronica, the module designed to help him take on the Hulk, had come out of that. So had a taser that knocked out Thor, and a gas that worked on Steve for long enough to get him in super-soldier level restraints without long term ill-effects. Today, the SHIELD staffers had brought barrels of the stuff and rigged it through the tower’s air systems, ready to be deployed in any room where a Steve—or any vanilla human, for that matter—got too rowdy. It had enabled Natasha and other agents to interview their inter-dimensional visitors in a casual setting, with a minimum show of force. So, with Jarvis to look out for him, Tony had nothing to worry about. And it was Steve after all—even from another universe, he was still Captain America, heroic, muscle-bound, perfect.

Tony shooed away the SHIELD team guarding the door, made sure Jarvis was the only one in on the surveillance, and knocked on the door to the Steve’s guest suite. “Hey, it’s, ah, Tony,” he said, frowning at his shoes. “Endemic-to-this-universe, Tony,” he clarified, and winced at himself.

A grinning Steve opened the door, smile brilliant. “Tony!” he said, and Tony couldn’t remember a time the Steve he knew had sounded that excited to see him, including the time he’d been missing for three days and was found unconscious under the rubble of a Latverian embassy in Toronto. “Thanks for coming to see me. C’mon in.”

“Uh, thanks,” Tony said, following him inside. The Steve led him to a little table next to the kitchenette and sat down. Tony joined him, taking it all in. He didn’t see the guest quarters often. Then he noticed what that this Steve was wearing. “Nice pajamas.”

Pajamas-Steve ducked his head, smiling again, and oh, what Tony would do to see that smile all the time. “Thanks, uh, the Tony in my universe got these for me.” He fingered the material of his his flannel pajama pants, which were patterned with little Iron Man helmets.

“And you wear them?”

Pajamas-Steve laughed, musical and open, and god, it was even better than the smile. “Yeah, uh, we’re—Tony and I are together. We have been for a while, it’s pretty serious. He has Captain America pajamas,” he added.

“Uh, congratulations,” Tony said, stunned. “What, uh, did you need to tell me about the multiverse situation?”

“I wish I could help with that,” pajamas-Steve said, his face becoming serious again. “But I just wandered in. I didn’t even have a shirt on when Jarvis sent a bunch of SHIELD agents into our—uh—your bedroom.” And that was just _unfair_ , an image of Steve and his abs and his skin alone in _Tony’s bedroom_ , and did that mean the shirt he was wearing was borrowed from the real Steve? What had that conversation been like, he wondered. “I actually wanted to tell you, uh, that.”

“That you crossed the multiverse topless?” Tony blinked.

That earned him the laugh again, and this wasn’t even Tony’s best material. “No, Tony… I—I know this must be really hard for you. And I just,” he swallowed. “I just keep thinking about what this would be like for you, for my Tony, if he were in this situation. If there were some other Steve Rogers there, well, I’d hope he would come by and make my Tony feel better. And I know we’re, you’re, not together here, not yet—”

“Yet,” Tony choked.

“Yes, not yet,” pajamas-Steve insisted. “Tony, that’s what I wanted to say to you. I know… this universe is so much like my home. And my Tony, he’s told me some stuff about growing up, and what it was like before we were together, and why we didn’t get together sooner. Your dad was wrong, Tony.”

Tony stared at him. Pajamas-Steve met his eyes the way Steves the multiverse over apparently did everything: earnestly and intensely. “You’re amazing, Tony. _I_ think you’re amazing. You’re brilliant, you’re a hero, you save people every day, and not just as Iron Man. I was wrong about you when we first met, _so_ wrong. You don’t have super-strength or a magical hammer, powers or any of that. There’s just you, and the things that you figure out and build, and they’re _amazing_. You’re amazing.”

Tony couldn’t meet his gaze any more after that, couldn’t deal with Steve, with Captain America, saying these things to him. “I, uh,” Tony blinked. “I’m gonna—” He started to stand up, and pajamas-Steve grabbed his hand. Not hard—Tony could slip out if he wanted to—but that soft grip, and Steve’s skin against his, stopped him.

“Anyone would be lucky to be with you, Tony. You deserve good things. You deserve to be happy. And I bet—I’m sure that the Steve here thinks so too. He just needs you to let him know how you feel.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Cap,” Tony said, rubbing his eyes with his palm. “It’s a different universe. He and I—”

“Tony. C’mon. Are gonna tell me you don’t wanna be with him?”

It felt like his throat was closing up. “Of course I want to be with him,” he choked out. “I’d do—to be—but. He’s the one—he would never—with me, I mean, he wouldn’t want—”

“Just think about what I said, okay?” pajamas-Steve whispered.

“Okay,” he managed to say somehow.

“Also. My—ah, Tony, he told me that if I ever got to meet a version of him from another universe, I had his permission and encouragement to, and I quote, ‘tap that.’”

“Did you— _just say that?”_ And he didn’t squeak, Tony Stark didn’t _squeak_ , he boomed in a manly manner, with authority and wit and charm and cleverness—everyone knew that, it was truth.

Pajamas-Steve was on his feet now, and bending over, leaning over Tony’s face. His face was _so close_ , and when he said, “He’d hoped it would be a threesome, obviously, but I gotta be able to tell him I tried,” it was like gravel and honey and Jesus Christ, pajamas-Steve was kissing him—Tony turned what might have been a small yelp into enthusiastically shoving his tongue into Steve’s mouth—and Tony was being kissed by a Steve Rogers for the second time in basically a day, even if it wasn’t _his_  Steve Rogers, the real one.

He kissed back anyway.

Pajamas-Steve’s mouth moved down his jaw, down his throat—and he really had to come up with a name for him besides _pajamas-Steve_ , this could be makeout-Steve or threesome-ready-Steve or smiles-Steve—and then he reached a long arm under Tony and scooped him into his arms. This time Tony did yelp in surprise. Smiles-Steve tossed him onto the bed—and damn, good thing Tony was such a gracious host, this bed was _huge_ , nearly the size of his own—and then jumped in with him.

“So,” smiles-Steve began, tracing his mouth along Tony’s shoulders as he undid the buttons of his shirt. “I wonder if you like the same things my boyfriend does?”

“Uh, what does he like?”

“Well,” smiles-Steve grinned, a grin so big it shouldn’t have been allowed—it filled his face and his eyes and he just glittered with it. His hands were all over Tony’s skin as he undressed him. “We have these, uh, games, you could call them.”

“Games?” it was all Tony could do to repeat.

“There’s this one we like, you could call it, uh, ‘I’m Captain America and you’re going to do what I say.’” When he said that part, he said it in his team leader voice, the one he pulled out when giant lizards were attacking Manhattan or a building was on fire. “Sometimes I tie him up, and tell him what to do, and order him to stop talking, and he gets in trouble if he doesn’t follow directions.”

“And does he stop talking?”

Smiles-Steve, true to his name, bit his lip and _beamed_. “Never,” he answered, wicked and pleased with himself. “Well, there’s _one_ thing that shuts him up,” he admitted. “The other one, the other main game we do is….” He ducked his head and reddened. “It’s a sort of—a blushing Steve Rogers the virgin game?”

“Are you shitting me? Captain America role-plays in bed?” Tony squeaked.

This drew another laugh, throaty and triumphant. “Yeah, we like that one a lot too. In that one, Tony doesn’t shut up _at all_.”

“You’ve, uh. I mean. You have quite the repertoire,” Tony said weakly.

Smiles-Steve was nuzzling his neck now, pressing small kisses along the skin there. “Yeah. I’ve learned about limits and compersion and safewords and everything.”

“Safewords, huh?”

Smile-Steve laughed again. “Yeah, ours is ‘Reed Richards.’ Tony figured it’s something he’d never, ever say during sex, otherwise.”

Tony laughed too. “Oh Jesus Christ, I am going to have so much fun with you, Steve Rogers.”

 

Tony blinked himself awake. He was about to ask Jarvis for the time when he turned his head to see smiles-Steve’s face right beside his. “It’s almost 3 in the afternoon,” smiles-Steve said, and reached out a hand to brush across Tony’s hair. “Sorry, I thought you could use the sleep.”

“Ha! So you admit it. You did just want to talk to me to trick me into taking a nap,” Tony said, cupping smiles-Steve’s jaw in his hand.

Smiles-Steve laughed. “I’m not gonna apologize for wanting to take care of you, Tony.”

“So, hey, gotta ask, you don’t have to answer, how did you and your, uh, Tony, get together?”

Smiles-Steve told him and held Tony while he did. A lot of it was about Magneto and how many people he killed in smiles-Steve’s universe. At one point, smiles-Steve winced and said, “Sorry if I don’t go into too much detail, but I think you can imagine how an Iron Man suit would do against Magneto,” and Tony could. The details were even sparser when it came to their other team members, he noticed. He mentioned Bruce once early in the story, and Thor barely appeared at all.

“And then when we found out that Hydra had taken over SHIELD,” smiles-Steve was saying later, “Tony was with me, Natasha, and Sam on the helicarriers. He helped me keep it together.” He stared at his hands, and his face looked empty without the smiles he’d been filling it with. “It felt like so much that I’d worked for—that I thought I’d died for—was for nothing, but he gave me the strength I needed. They had this satellite targeting system. It was going to murder millions of people, and we had to stop it. And, uh, Bucky was there…” He licked his lips.

“Steve, you don’t have to tell me,” he whispered.

“No, I want to. Uh, Bucky, he. I thought he might remember? He remembered me for a minute, once, I thought. Earlier. Maybe he didn’t, really. And then, we’d stopped the targeting program, and the helicarriers were going down, and I just couldn’t fight him any more. But Bucky, he wasn’t really Bucky any more, and he kept fighting me. He fought you—he fought Tony, and,” smiles-Steve, pajamas-Steve, closed his eyes. “I had to kill him,” he said quietly.

“Steve.” Tony held him.

“He almost killed Tony,” smiles-Steve murmured. “He—we shouldn’t have that much power, not without working for it,” he said softly, and Tony filed that away to examine later on.

“I’m here, Steve,” he said.

They talked for a while, after that, holding each other under the covers as the afternoon sun moved through the room. Smiles-Steve told him about a trip he and his Tony had taken to Venice, the TV shows they watched together, and their favorite places to get takeout after a battle. Tony told him things smiles-Steve already knew about another Tony, about palladium poisoning, a giant donut, making a new element, waking at night thinking he was in a cave in Afghanistan, about Yinsen and Obie and Pepper and Rhodey. Then smiles-Steve said, “I know in a way we just met, and you wish you could ask, so. Just so you know. Bucky and I, we were never together. Not like Tony and I are. He’s—he was—not like that.”

It was almost 6 o’clock when Tony slipped out to get them some dinner. Real-Steve and real-Natasha were in the kitchen going over reports when he walked in, and he realized he was in just an undershirt and jeans with no belt or shoes or socks. “Hi,” he said, his mouth dry.

“Hi Tony,” said Natasha, her face utterly blank.

“Hey Tony,” Steve said, and the crease between his brows was there. After seeing so many smiles on that face, Tony ached at their absence.

He grabbed some takeout containers without checking what was in them and fled.

“I hope your taste in food is just as bad as the Steve I know,” he said when he returned to smiles-Steve’s rooms. “Because I think I have half a veggie taco, two slices of pizza with pineapple, some chow mein from approximately two weeks ago, and a carton of coleslaw from god-knows-where. Bon appétit!” Smiles-Steve laughed at that, so it was all alright, then.

He was, indeed, not picky, and tore into the cold food with gusto. He was plucking at the remnants with his bare hands, and Tony was raiding the minibar in the little fridge—he was the best host ever, really, he was just so good at things—when smiles-Steve said, “So, I actually do have some intel on the multiverse situation.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I just, I wanted to talk to you first, see if you’re really like my Tony, if I could trust you.”

“How’d I measure up?” Tony asked.

“Tony,” smiles-Steve sighed theatrically and mussed his hair, but he was smiling. “You’re amazing. I’ll tell you every time I see you if I have to. Obviously, if I’m mentioning it, you passed, you idiot.”

“‘Idiot,’ right, like I’m going to take that from you. Last week you asked me what cuisine Natasha’s new curling iron was used for.”

“There’s this device. SHIELD found it in the 90s,” smiles-Steve continued through bites of cold pizza. “It should be on the files here, too. The alien tech experts over there haven’t been able to get it to do a thing. But my Tony was getting somewhere with it. He was working on it. He had it in his workshop this morning before I...” He waved his hand vaguely to indicate hopping universes. “And I remember some of the stuff he said about it. A lot of it, actually—I have a really good memory, especially since the serum. I’ll tell you what I know, and you should be able to figure out how to get us—I mean, all of us—back where we belong. I know you can do it, Tony.”

 

Tony had the specs for the device and the notes smiles-Steve had given him up on all his workshop monitors and holograms when real-Steve came in, carrying two pizza boxes that smelled like heaven. “Dinner break,” he commanded, and Tony tried to pull his mind away from the games that smiles-Steve had described. “We had to order from three different pizza places to get enough to feed everyone,” he added, and Tony noticed that the boxes he’d brought were from Tony’s favorite spot in Little Italy.

Real-Steve set the steaming boxes on the table closest to where Tony sat, and Tony spun his chair to face him. “How’s it going with the gadget?” real-Steve asked.

“It’s promising,” Tony replied with his mouth full. He fiddled with the image of the device he had up, tracing the blocky curves and minimal interface with one finger. It looked kind of like a first-generation iPod and a Rubik’s cube had had a premature baby together. “It definitely does what the other Steve said it does. It sort of,” he gestured with his pizza hand, his slice shedding olives and pepperoni as he did so. “Thins the barriers between universes so that people or things or data can come through.”

“Do you trust him?” Steve asked.

“To a point,” Tony admitted. “I believe he wants to get back to his universe. That’s why he told me about the device at all—it’s his only way back. From what he told me about the way the me there was using this equipment, though, it looks like he was trying to bring something into theirs. If the Steve I talked to knew that, he didn’t mention it, which is something.”

“It is something,” Steve said.

“He’s still a _you_ though. How untrustworthy could he be?” Tony said, gobbling a pizza crust and licking sauce off his fingers. Steve’s face changed at that, in a way he couldn’t quite interpret. “I still wouldn’t let him into my workshop,” he added, trying to be reassuring, if that’s what Steve needed. “I mean, I just met the guy.”

“That’s an interesting measure of trust,” Steve said slowly.

Tony wondered if Steve knew that Tony had slept with the other Steve. It gave him a little bit of a headache trying to even phrase it to himself, and he didn’t want Steve to be any more uncomfortable around him than he already was. So he changed the subject. “I wonder how the me from that universe even thought to look at this thing. SHIELD had zero luck with it, haven’t been able to connect it with any known alien culture. They couldn’t even guess what it was for. These diagrams and x-rays are all from them, but it’s like handing the blueprints for a circuit board to a medieval monk—they clearly had no idea what any of it meant. They had it for over twenty years and just knew it was alien and it did _something_.”

“Sir,” Jarvis interrupted. “Ms. Romanoff has just entered the elevator and the RNA scanner indicates that she is not indigenous to this universe.”

“We got our first Natasha twin, J?”

“That’s the thing, Sir,” Jarvis said, and was that hesitancy in his synthesized voice? “There is still only the one Ms. Romanoff in the building. I have been tracking her movements, and all evidence, other than this test, indicates that this is the same Ms. Romanoff who, ten minutes ago, passed a scan as herself in order to review a SHIELD report.”

“Jarvis, run analysis. We figured that data could pass through universes with this thing if it was set up correctly, right? Could that include a, um, human consciousness?” Tony asked through a frown.  

“Analyzing,” Jarvis replied. Then, “For a certain definition of ‘human consciousness,’ certainly. However, the question is rather more metaphysical than the data can definitively describe.”

“Sure,” Tony said, running scenarios through his head. “Everyone from the same universe has the same quantum signature, right? Does this other Natasha have one that matches anyone else who’s come through?”

“Yes, Sir. The scan indicates that she is from the same universe as the Steve Rogers with whom you spent the afternoon.”

Tony and Steve’s looked at each other, both wide-eyed. “Jarvis, let her in the elevator and send her down here. Uh, don’t let her access the workshop itself, we’ll meet her at the landing,” Tony added quickly. “Tint the glass too. I don’t want her even seeing in.”

“Right away, Sir.”

“Uh, sorry about this, but—play along?” Tony said as the door slid shut behind them and he grabbed Steve’s hand in his. He looked anywhere but at Steve’s face. “If she thinks you’re the other you, maybe she’ll talk.”

The elevator opened. “Where’s the other Natasha?” she asked.

Steve drew in a breath to reply, but Tony interrupted before he could say anything. “She didn’t come through, there’s been some kind of problem.”

Her eyes flicked between them. “You’re not telling me something. Steve. You said you trusted me. Did you have to kill her?” and then she gasped and backed into the elevator wall, and Natasha did not _gasp_ , not when she wasn’t playing a character. Tony racked his brain to think of a time he’d seen her this discomposed and found only his own panic. Tony realized he was squeezing Steve’s hand way too hard. It wasn’t fair to Steve, he knew, to take this as an opportunity to be close to him, but it was just hand-holding, and he was selfish. She inhaled deeply, loudly, and blinked. But when she spoke again, her voice was steady. “There’s something wrong,” she announced, and held her hands up, her fingers spread. “I don’t remember how I got down here. You need to take me into custody.”

Steve dropped Tony’s hand—Tony was already mourning the loss of contact—and reached for Natasha. “There are zip ties in my belt, second pocket from the left,” she announced. Tony went for them, and a rectangle of light passed over them.

“Sir, scans now indicate that Ms. Romanoff is the one original to this universe,” Jarvis announced when the light disappeared.

Natasha took this in with equanimity, and _that_ was the Natasha Tony knew. He finished fastening her hands behind her back when she said, “Ankles too. Steve, you’ll have to carry me. If I’m compromised, don’t take any chances.”

“Uh,” Steve said.

“You heard the lady,” Tony said, frowning at Natasha’s feet as he bent down to bind them. “Though I bet you could still figure out a way to kill us if you really wanted to.”

She rolled her eyes and allowed a quarter of a smile to form on her mouth. “Jarvis would gas us all before I could get very far. Hop to it, soldier,” she said, the last directed at Steve.

“Do you remember being the other Natasha?” Tony asked. “Did she buy that she was still in her own universe?”

But Natasha was shaking her head. “Nope, one second I was upstairs, next thing I was down here.”

“Do you have, a, uh, preference? For how I carry you?” Steve asked.

Natasha was looking at Tony and still smirking when she answered. “Bridal style, please.” Steve had a determined look on his face as he complied. “And you’ll need to get all my pockets, Tony. No funny stuff. I saw you taking liberties with Rogers’ hand there, earlier.”

“That was _undercover_ work. You of all people—” Tony began.

“Just go through her pockets, Tony,” Steve almost snapped.

 

Soon Natasha was secured in guest quarters of her own—she had too many weapons stashed in her own rooms, plus a plan she refused to detail on how to leave the tower via her rooms without even Jarvis detecting it—talking quietly with real-Clint. After convening briefly to update one another, the team, sans Natasha, passed along a heavily redacted version to SHIELD. Bruce returned to work on the nature of displacement between universes, accompanied by three Jane Fosters and an Eric Selvig who seemed trustworthy. The rest of the team conducted further interviews with their interdimensional visitors.

The interviews continued into the wee hours of the morning, when real-Steve told Tony to get some rest, and he was so tired that he complied with little argument. It was with dismay that he awoke at 6:30am to Jarvis saying, “Sir, apologies for waking you, but Dr. Banner is requesting that the team assemble to discuss the recent results of his examinations. Captain Rogers is currently securing the primary shared kitchen and preparing scrambled eggs in expectation of the meeting.”

Tony hauled himself out of bed without bothering to put on anything more than a bathrobe over the shorts and tank top he’d slept in. “If there’s not coffee in here, so help me—”

“There’s coffee, Tony,” Steve replied as Tony came in, handing him a mug so piping hot, he had to wrap his hand in his bathrobe sleeve to hold it.

“You fucking spoil him, Rogers,” Clint complained through his cereal.

“No, see, I’m pretty sure it’s called ‘being handled,’ Clint,” Tony said, hefting himself into a wooden chair. “I’m a lot more manageable once I’m caffeinated.”

“Good morning, comrades-in-arms!” Thor boomed as he entered the kitchen. Tony’s eyes followed Steve as he moved around the kitchen, finishing the eggs, moving them into a serving bowl, and setting them on the table with a stack of plates.

“Ugh, how are you so cheerful?” Bruce asked as he stumbled through the door after Thor.

Thor beamed. “I apologize if my mirth is ill-timed, my friend. But I am simply filled with joy at meeting so many incarnations of my darling Jane! Every one that I have met speaks highly of the relationship that she has with the Thor in her own universe.”

“Good for you, buddy,” Clint said, slapping Thor on the back. Tony and Steve dug into the eggs.

“Additionally,” Thor continued. “One Jane whom I had the honor of meeting yesterday divulged to me a birthday surprise that the Thor in her realm gifted to her, which had not yet occurred to me. You see, the hammer can be used to multiple purposes, and—”

“Woa, TMI, TMI!” Clint rushed to clap a hand over Thor’s mouth. He continued grinning through Clint’s fingers.

“Uh, I’ll take that as an opportunity to segue into what I wanted to talk about,” Bruce spoke up. “The, y’know, Janes I’ve been working with and I have determined that it’s not really great, long-term, to have multiple versions of someone all in the same universe. It’s inherently unstable,” he continued, bringing out some hard-copy charts and analyses about atomic structure and entropy that were more for his and Tony’s benefit than for anyone else. “Basically,” he was finishing saying, “some of our duplicates, especially those of us from universes that are really similar, like, have a lot in common. We have the exact same atoms, protons, and neutrons as each other. Other than the quantum signature, that is, and that’s negligible when it comes to this issue. And the same matter just wasn’t meant to exist simultaneously in the same universe, so if it stays together too long, it breaks down.”

“Uh, breaks down? That doesn’t sound good. Does anything mitigate the effects?” Tony asked, trying not to spill hot sauce on the pages as he flipped through them and ate at the same time.

Bruce shook his head. “It’s not good. And no, nothing that we can identify does anything to help—not distance in space or anything else.” He ran his hand through his hair. “And yeah, eventually, it’ll kill us.”

“How long do we have?” Steve asked.

“A week, tops,” Bruce replied, hiding his face behind his mug of tea. “And that’s not the only problem. We’ll, uh, probably all die before it becomes a concern, but. The materializations are accelerating. Kind of, exponentially? A little bit exponentially. The affected area is increasing. It’s still contained to midtown Manhattan, for now, but that’s going to change. Again, if we don’t figure out how to send everyone back we’ll be dead anyway, along with everyone else who’s coming through, but it’ll be a big problem for the whole planet if we can’t stop more people from coming through. Because, I mean, there are infinity infinity universes out there, and we can’t hold all of them in ours. We’d run out of room on the planet and then, well, everywhere.”

“No pressure on me, though, to figure out the device, or anything,” Tony said over the stunned silence that followed.

“We’ll do everything we can to help you, Tony. We’re going to solve this,” Steve said, which was more reassuring than it had any right to be. “There’s more going on than just the people coming through, though.”

“Natasha,” Bruce said, nodding. “And the, uh, Steve, from the universe where the scans said Natasha was from for a minute there.”

“How is she doing?” Steve directed this at Clint, who shrugged.

“She’s Nat,” he replied, which was answer enough.

“She’s also the only one whose subatomic particles aren’t showing signs of the material-temporal deterioration,” Bruce added. “If what we’ve guessed is true, and the consciousnesses of the two Natashas are switching out in the same body, that would be why. The fact that she’s not deteriorating, though—we might be able to use that to figure out how to separate them and get to the bottom of why it’s happening to everyone else.”

“That Natasha and Steve are clearly at the center of all this,” Steve went on. “If we’re lucky, when the other Natasha spoke to me and Tony yesterday, she really thought that she was still in her own universe, and that we were the Steve and Tony she knew. We can’t count on it, but it’s all that we have to go on—she made it sound like, for some reason, they were trying to get a copy of our Natasha into their universe.” The tiredness showed in his eyes as he shook his head. “I remember the days when I thought aliens showing up was the weirdest thing I’d have to deal with. Uh, no offense, Thor.”

“None taken, Steven!” Thor said heartily. “What reason would they have to retrieve a second Black Widow?”

“Exactly,” Steve said. “And why Natasha? Why not any of the rest of us?”

“Not many other people Nat would trust to help her out,” Clint supplied, and if he minded that this implied that she wouldn’t trust him, her closest friend, to help her, it didn’t show on his face. “That still doesn’t tell us what they need help for, though.”

“I have an idea about that,” Steve said. “Before the thing with Natasha happened, we were focusing on talking to everyone from universes where SHIELD had been infiltrated by Hydra, to figure out what we can do to stop it if it’s happening here. It was slow going, because it had to be just us, since we couldn’t have anyone from SHIELD know about it, and Bruce and Tony had more pressing things to work on. But there were some common threads in all of them, so probably a lot of it is going to be true of the universe where the Steve and Natasha in the middle of this are from.”

Tony closed his eyes. “Bucky,” he whispered, and rubbed his face with his hands. “I, uh. We probably can’t trust everything he says, but, that Steve I talked to yesterday.” Smiles-Steve, he thought, the Steve who had kept smiling at him and laughing with him and holding him. “He said he had to—he killed Bucky.”

Steve plowed onward. “Bucky died, falling off a helicarrier, in a few of the other universes. And I, the Steves in those, well, some of the Clints, Tonys, and Bruces thought that they blamed themselves. They quit the Avengers. A couple of them started speaking out against super-powered people and nonhumans.”

“That tracks with what we know about this Steve so far,” Clint agreed. “Trusting Natasha and Tony over everyone else. No superpowers, mutant gene, Inhuman stuff, any of that.”

“That doesn’t explain why they didn’t trust a, y’know, you,” Steve said.

Clint shook his head. “There could be tons of reasons. Hell, it seems like I’m dead in a lot of universes. Besides, I’m too close with Thor and the rest, and Natasha knows I used to have this thing with Kurt Wagner. She wouldn’t risk me getting involved with something like that.”

“You dated a dude who calls himself Nightcrawler? Night. Crawler? Like the earthworm?” Tony asked.

“You’re just jealous you never bagged a teleporter, Stark,” Clint said.

“I’m still on the part about you being dead in a bunch of universes,” Bruce complained at nearly the same time. “We’re going to need _so much_ therapy after this.”

“Only after?” Clint quipped.

“So they went after Natasha because the only person she trusts is herself,” Tony said, trying not to think about how apparently, the only person smiles-Steve trusted was Tony.

“Yeah, I relate to that. I wish our Natasha could help us right out about now,” Clint said.

“And they want to take out super people. Great. Are we figuring that includes aliens, too?” Tony said, reaching for the coffee pitcher to refill his mug.

“I spoke to a duplicate of myself, during our interviews yesterday,” Thor answered. “He relayed to me how, after the events involving Hydra occurred, the Steve Rogers in his universe had an altercation with him. Steven blamed that Thor, and people like us, for the existence of Hydra, as well as for the acts of our brother Loki and much of the conflict in the world overall. He said that people such as ourselves are no more than bullies and eugenicists,” he finished, his face drawn.

“So, ah, we have a—a working hypothesis of what this Steve is after. Hydra was trying to create super people, and now he’s against super people. But we still don’t know why Natasha is helping him,” Bruce said. “The Natasha I know wouldn’t be on board with that. I know she doesn’t blame you for Loki’s actions, Thor.”

“It’s pretty tricky to speculate, when it comes to Natasha and feelings,” Clint said. “But Steve’s our leader. And he’s _Steve_ , he’s Captain America, he’s about as trustworthy as you can get. It’d take a lot for her not to follow his lead, if he thought what he was doing was gonna help people.”

Tony had to agree; he’d had a similar thought just the day before. “So, what’s our play here?” he asked. “How can we use this to stop them and get the pipes of the multiverse back in working order?”

“Fortunately, there’s one thing everyone in the tower has in common,” Steve began. “We all want not to die. We all want to get everyone back to their home universes. Well, almost everyone,” he amended. “There seem to be a couple of us who want to kidnap our Natasha and kill a bunch of us. But they still want to not die from the quantum deterioration thing. We can work with that. What’s going to be trickier to get now is more information on the device, and exactly what that Steve and Natasha were trying to do with it, so we can send everyone back and stop them from doing whatever they have planned.”

“Yeah,” Bruce said thoughtfully. “Yeah, maybe we can get that Steve and our Natasha together—or, it wouldn’t even have to be our Natasha, if we could get surveillance without them knowing—”

“Wouldn’t work,” Steve interrupted. “Even if we could know for sure we’d convinced that Steve that it was the Natasha from his universe, he’d know we’d be listening. At least Jarvis would be. They wouldn’t risk that. This Steve has shown his hand—to him, Tony’s running the show. That’s who we need him to keep trusting. After that, it won’t matter if he thinks Jarvis is listening or not, because he’ll think Tony is on his side.” He said it so matter-of-factly, the way he did any battle plan, like it was the most natural thing in the world for a Steve to pin all of his hopes and plans on a Tony.

“Can a, uh, another Tony handle that?” Tony squinted hopefully. “I should really work on the device—”

“No,” Steve said firmly. “Sorry.” And he _did_ sound sorry. “But like I said, there’s one goal we have in common, and that’s getting everyone back where we belong. I can trust any of the Tonys with figuring out how to do that, to do the science part of it. You’re the only one I can trust to do get the intel we need.”

Tony licked his lips. “I. Okay. Maybe I can, uh, change his mind—”

But Steve shook his head. “If he’s gotten this far, if he’s like me, he’s not going to change his mind. He thinks he’s right, and he thinks this is the way to help people, to save people. You can’t let him know you don’t agree with him, not where it counts. But we don’t know for sure what he really thinks. We just know that he and that Natasha are up to something, and they’re focusing it on our Natasha, in our universe. That’s what we’ve got to figure out how to stop. I know this is hard, Tony.” Steve took his hand. Tony jerked when he first touched it, but he kept it there. “But he wants to trust you, I promise. You’ve got this.”

Steve turned to the others. “So, that’s Tony’s mission for now, to get us the intel. We’ll go through what we have on the other Tonys so far and get some teams of them working on the device. They’re bored out of their minds, so they should be happy to work on a project. Same with the Bruces, Janes, and Selvigs. We need them on this matter breakdown stuff, to see if there’s a way to slow it down, or better yet, stop it. And to get the two Natashas separated. The rest of us need to be on alert in case it comes to a physical showdown. In the meantime, we keep interviewing everyone who comes in, see what we can learn, who we can count on to help out if we need it.”

They discussed logistics for a while after that, exchanging further reports on all of the interviews and interactions with the out-of-universe newcomers.

At one point, Thor suggested that any Thor that could wield his Mjölnir was by definition, worthy, since they would be all be judged by the same Odin rather than the one of their home universe; Tony argued that if the whole wielding Mjölnir thing was a trick and it was down to Thor’s thumbprint or DNA or something, that any Thor in the multiverse would be able to pick up any hammer, so it was moot. Steve said they’d use the Mjölnir-worthiness test as a backup if it came to that, because Steve was a peacemaker.

And oh god, Steve. Their plan depended on Tony getting a Steve to fully trust him. Steve’s plan, real-Steve’s plan. What a fucking mess.

 

Finally, the meeting wound to a close. Clint cornered Tony as he tried to leave to put on some presentable clothes. The pajamas thing looked great on smiles-Steve—or maybe evil-Steve, he should be called, since he apparently, maybe, allegedly, wanted to eliminate all super-powered people and didn’t mind kidnapping Natasha to do it—but Tony knew he couldn’t pull it off in the same way.

“Dude,” Clint said. “I know I’m shit at this feelings crap, but are you gonna be okay with this?”

“Really reassuring, Barton,” Tony snapped.

“I’m serious. Steve doesn’t know what he’s asking of you. You slept with this guy yesterday. He’s gonna know something’s off if it’s still on the table and you say no today.”

“Does everyone know I slept with him?” Tony grumbled.

“Uh, Natasha thought it was pretty obvious, that’s all I got for ya.”

“Okay, and, hey, tell me—why am I supposed to want to say no to sleeping with a Steve?”

“Don’t play dumb, asshole, it doesn’t suit you.”

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” Tony threw up his hands.

“It means, I know you’ve got it bad for Steve, and yesterday this guy says, hey, where I come from Steve’s got it bad for you too, and now you’ve found out that really he’s got ulterior motives. At the _least._ At the worst, he’s genocidal. That’s gotta fuck with a guy.”

“You—he has _super-hearing_ , is—”

“Chill, our good captain is already up doing more interviews. Have you ever done the honeypot thing before? With someone you’d caught feelings for?” Clint looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“No, I have not ‘ _done the honeypot thing_ ,’ and—”

“Just been on the receiving end, huh? That’s something to go off of, at least. Look, this is more Nat’s line than mine, obviously, but I know Cap, and this guy is still Cap, kinda. Try to be straightforward with him. The snark and the overthinking and all that crap—he loves it, but it confuses the shit out of him. Okay? And if you can, try to compartmentalize. He looks just like Steve, but it’s not him. What happens with you and this guy, it doesn’t have to mean anything for what happens with you and Steve. Got it?”

“Got it,” Tony repeated weakly.

Yeah, it sounded like a lie to him, too.


	2. Chapter 2

Tony wished he could ask Natasha for advice. Instead, he picked a Steve. The one who had been out jogging the other day, who had kissed Tony, seemed promising. Tony brought him a bear claw. “Got cabin fever yet?” he asked as he was let into a guest suite. The rooms were a mirror image of the ones he’d been in the day before, but with a different painting hanging over the bed.

“Getting there,” jogging-Steve admitted, taking the pastry with enthusiasm. “Glad for a distraction, that’s for sure. You got more questions for me?” he asked, digging into the bear claw.

“Hey, yeah, actually.” Tony rolled on his heels and stared at his feet. “I was hoping for some, um, advice? On, y’know, getting with you. I mean,” he stammered. “Another you,” he finished lamely.

“Yeah, I’m in a committed, monogamous relationship,” jogging-Steve said with a little smile. He was wearing regular Steve clothes now, jeans and a t-shirt that clung to his shoulders and waist. “And I’m not sure what I can tell you. Once I knew my Tony liked me back, that was it. Just be yourself, and tell him the truth. For a while, I wasn’t sure Tony even liked me as a friend, actually,” he admitted.

“You’re, uh, contradicting yourself a little bit there, Cap,” Tony pointed out.

“Heh, I guess I am. I meant—try to relax around him. You don’t have to go out of your way or do something special. Tony being Tony is what made me fall for him. And us being honest with each other about how we felt is how we started dating.”

Tony went to five other Steves who he knew were romantically involved with the Tonys in their universes. They all said similar things. One said pretty much an _identical_ thing, which was creepy. One told him a story that involved Steve thinking Tony was dead after a Kree attack and kidnapping attempt, Tony thinking Steve was dead after a Hulk copycat wiped out a SHIELD base, and a tearful reunion while fighting a cybernetic army in Detroit. Tony didn’t find that one much more helpful. He did get one Steve to tell him his favorite outfit of Tony’s—besides the armor, “of course,” the Steve had said with a blush Tony was never going to forget—which was apparently the grimy work clothes he wore in his workshop, so that guy was clearly a loon. There was a Steve who had started out as fuck-buddies with his Tony, wanting more the whole while, and then had accidentally said “I love you, Tony” over open comms during a battle, which was somehow even less helpful.

After that he ran out of bear claws.

He switched to coffee as his offering, and checked which Tonys were both awake at this ungodly hour (about 10am) and romantically involved with the Steves in their universes. He’d forgotten that most of the awake ones would be working on the device and would hate being interrupted for this. They were generating a lot of duplicate work, but given that they couldn't be 100% sure which Tonys to trust, that was helpful in its own way too. Finally, with Jarvis’ help, he cornered one who was still eating breakfast in his guest quarters.

“I brought the good stuff,” he said by way of an opening, showing the label on the paper coffee cup he held.

“Gimme,” the other Tony said. “What idiot sent you in to talk to me?”

“I know, I know,” real, original-flavor Tony said, sitting down. The other Tony glared, and Tony named him grumpy-Tony. “I promise to be quick. Hey. How’d you land a guy like Steve?”

Grumpy-Tony rolled his eyes. “Fuck if I know. God, I know it’s _Steve_ , and your prioritizing sucks, but didn’t Bruce say we’re like, all going to die if we don’t figure out how to get out of here soon? Can’t you and your Steve work this out once we’re out of your hair? And not, y’know, gonna die?”

Tony sipped his coffee by way of having actual patience. He was going to get answers, dammit. “It’s important, trust me. C’mon, just tell me, how’d you two lovebirds get together?”

“I can’t believe I considered having a threesome with you,” grumpy-Tony said. “Fine, ugh, if it’ll get you out of here and get me to a real computer with a real fucking internet connection—did you know they’re barely even letting me talk to Jarvis? Me?”

“Oh my god, are you trying to torment me? Just answer the fucking question,” Tony moaned. Also his face definitely didn’t do that pinched thing when _he_ drank coffee. He’d check footage if he had to to prove it.

“You _do_ clearly need to get laid. Fucking chill out, Christ. Fine, me and Steve. So, basically, I was obsessed with him, and then he kissed me, and uh, I thought he was fucking with me. I got mad and yelled at him a bunch, and he said he wasn’t. I guess he thought I was fucking with _him_ , but we finally worked it out and had sex a bunch of times. After he said he loved me every day, for like, a year, I guess I started believing that he believed it. And somehow I haven’t fucked it up yet. Okay? Okay. Bye!” he stood and opened his door, pointing Tony out of it.

“Fine, some help you are,” Tony grumbled, standing to go.

“Also, hey, that threesome or more-some is still on the table, if you get enough Steves on board,” he called as Tony left.

He tried to brace himself for his next attempt, but there wasn’t much he could do to prepare himself to face three versions of himself and their three boyfriends, who were all Steve Rogers.

“Are you here to help or just bug us?” asked the Tony closest to the door when he came in with a tray of full coffee cups.

“Okay, hey, first off, offended you have to ask that, truly wounded. All our lives are at stake here,” Tony began, and the other Tonys rolled their eyes. “And before we get started, I’m obviously Tony-prime, because this is my tower and my universe. What’ve you been calling each other in here?”  

“Are we really _introducing ourselves_ right now?” another Tony complained from a computer.

“There’s an Optimus Prime joke in here somewhere,” the third Tony muttered.

“What’s that?” asked a Steve.

“Google it, Grandpa,” the third Tony said.

“They’ve been calling me quin-Steve,” another Steve intervened.

“Do I want to know?” Tony-prime asked, as quin-Steve’s ears turned red.

Quin-Tony smirked. “We hooked up on the quinjet the first time we got together. It seemed a good way to differentiate. That’s Yankees-Steve. He’s dating pi-Tony—”

“I _told_ you, I was fucking with you guys, I just wanted to see if I could convince you pi was different in my universe—” pi-Tony began.

“He got the thirty-ninth digit of pi wrong,” quin-Tony continued smugly, at the same time that Tony-prime said, “Seriously, you’re a fan of the _Yankees_?”

“The twenty-first century is a weird place,” Yankees-Steve insisted.

“It figures any Steve dating someone like me is batshit,” Tony-prime complained. “What do they call you?” he asked the remaining nameless Tony, the one who had griped about introducing themselves.

It was the Steve giving that Tony a shoulder rub who answered. “Uh, I called him ‘baby’ when we first got here, in front of the others, so they’ve just been calling him Baby. And me Daddy. Which they’ve _already explained_ , so please don’t.”

“Have you got more data or better equipment or anything, or are you just here to play preschool with us?” Baby grumbled, shaking loose of Daddy to grab a coffee, and ugh, _his_ face did that thing when he drank too, was Tony cursed?

“Fine, okay, I wanted to ask about, you know—and this is for a mission, okay, otherwise I wouldn’t be in here, trust me—how,” Tony-prime waved his hands in frustration. “How did you get Steve to, you know, date you, love you, trust you, that sort of thing.”

“Fuck if I know,” quin-Tony and Baby said at nearly the same time, then glared each other, and Yankees-Steve and quin-Steve both sighed and said, “Tony,” in the exact same tone of voice, and wow, this was way too much to deal with right now.

“Okay, fine, I bought him this David Hockney painting—” Baby began.

“That is _not_ why I started dating you, Tony,” Daddy interrupted.

Baby snorted and flung his hands in the air. “Fine, you tell it.”

“I’d had a—thing—for Tony since we first started working together. Then I realized I was falling in love with him, and I couldn’t really tell if he even liked me. But Bruce and Clint and Natasha and Thor and Jane and Darcy said that he did, a lot, so, I told him how I felt, and when I got him to take me seriously, we got together.”

“The being convinced to take you seriously part was pretty good, huh,” Baby said, a fond and glazed look taking over his face. Daddy mussed his hair affectionately.

“There was this weird thing at this gala this one time, and Tony thought I was really homophobic, so he kept flirting with me and baiting me. Then I called his bluff and wouldn’t leave him alone. I asked if he’d be my guy, and he said yes,” quin-Steve said matter-of-factly. “Can I ask how this is for a mission? Because if you’re here to see if we’ll all have sex together—”

“Oh my god, it was just a _suggestion_ , and you’re the one who said we need to be sure we took breaks from working—” quin-Tony was saying.

“You can ask about the mission all you like. I’m not telling,” Tony-prime answered. “You guys are so not helpful. Why does Steve _like_ us, you, whatever?”

The three Steves were crowded around Tony-prime now, patting him on the shoulders and nodding sympathetically, and his vision swam to take in all of the biceps in front of him.

“Oh, Tony,” Yankees-Steve said with a sigh.

“You’re amazing Tony,” Daddy said. “In any universe.”

“Just be yourself,” quin-Steve said.

“And that face you make when you drink coffee is really cute,” Daddy mused.

“I’m sure the Steve in this universe cares about you, too,” Yankees-Steve said. “Just tell him how you feel.”

“It’s—hey, it’s not about the Steve from this universe. It’s for a _mission_ ,” Tony-prime insisted, and it _was_. “You guys are useless. Have fun with your parental-locked computers and your quinjet sex and your goddamn Yankees!”

He tried just one more time after that. On the principle that he should be able to figure out how to talk to _himself_. He reviewed the interview notes and had Jarvis send him a Tony he was calling married-Tony, because yeah, one of him was married to Steve. If the Howard Stark in his universe only knew that his son-in-law was going to be Captain America, he wouldn’t know whether to roll or dance a jig in his grave.

Married-Tony groaned when he came out of the room where he’d been working and saw that it was Tony-prime waiting for him. “Is there at least Bailey's in that coffee you're trying to bribe me with?”

“I’m not a _heathen_ ,” Tony said, then thought. “Okay, I am a heathen. I meant, I'm not the Steve of preparing coffee. Yes, there's Bailey's in it. And, perfect lead-up, speaking of Steve, why does he like you, and how can I learn how to do it in the next five minutes?”

“Fuck if I know,” married-Tony wrinkled his nose but took the coffee. “Okay, okay, so, Steve says that I do this thing, where, I never say what I’m really thinking. I’ll say I’m fine when I’m not, or ‘leave me alone’ when I want someone to hold me, or ‘fuck you’ when I just want Captain America to think I’m an alright guy. It makes it so that when I would actually, like, mention how hot he is or how perfect he is or about that thing? That the uniform does to his ass? When he’s throwing the shield? Anyway, it made it so he thought I was fucking with him, so, y’know, I’m working on that, and he’s working on learning to tell when I’m being sarcastic or not, but mostly? My advice is, tell him you want him. More than that, tell him you want to be with him, or he’ll think you just want him for sex. And, uh, he’ll believe you. Even if this Steve isn’t into you, he’ll still be your friend. He’s Steve—he just wants you to be happy, even if he doesn’t want, y’know, your dick.”

“But why does he _like_ you?” Tony asked.

Married-Tony shrugged. “Being frozen for seventy years warped his sense of romance?” he suggested. “These days I just roll with it and count myself lucky. Can I go now?”

So Tony was left with nothing to do but go see smiling, pajamas wearing, maybe-evil, confused-Steve.

 

Smiling, pajamas-wearing, maybe-evil, confused-Steve was in fact smiling when he opened the door, but now he was wearing unfairly fitted jeans and a shirt so tight and thin it might as well have been a second skin. “Tony!” he said, hugging him. Tony was fucked.

“How are you holding up?”

“I’m pretty bored,” confused-Steve admitted. “No one’s telling me what’s going on, and most of the internet’s been blocked. Some SHIELD guys brought me a treadmill and some books to read, but I’m not crazy about being cooped up in here by myself. You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he added, beaming.

“You’re not so bad yourself,” Tony said, because that part was true at least. Evil or confused or whatever, this Steve was all shoulders and sparkling eyes, and that was something to look at, all right. But then confused-Steve was kissing him, and _no, yes, what_. If it were just the slip and slide of lips and tongue, the nibbling and the touching, that would be one thing, but the holding—no one gave hugs like Steve. He was so broad that he just enveloped Tony with his embrace. But now it didn’t feel safe and warm and perfect—it felt like a trap, and Tony found himself trying to wriggle out of it.

“Woa, hey, you okay?” the Steve asked, letting go, with what looked to Tony like concern in his blue eyes.

“Sorry! I...” He swallowed and tried to think. Thinking was what he was good at. He could do this, somehow, even with a Steve staring at him with his pupils blown and his lips so wet and red—and, oh, he could see his nipples through the thin fabric of his shirt. “I’m finally getting something going with my Steve,” Tony blurted. “From my universe. Uh, after you and I talked yesterday, I talked to him”—that was partially true at least— “and, hey, it’s really new. He didn’t say anything outright, but I really don’t want to make him uncomfortable. Even though you’re both _you_ —”

“Oh!” confused-Steve sounded relieved. He smiled again and tucked a strand of hair behind Tony’s ear. “You could have said earlier. Congratulations, Tony.”

“Uh, thanks,” he said meekly. “I wanted to, uh, thank you? And just. Talk. It was really nice talking to you. It’s kind of easier to talk to you than it is to, uh, him, to my Steve, right now.”

“I’m really glad what I said helped,” confused-Steve said quietly, running his hand down Tony’s shoulder to his hand. “Come sit with me.”

“Yeah, okay,” Tony let himself be pulled back to the kitchenette where they’d shared their cold dinner of leftovers just the night before.

“How’d he convince you to leave the bedroom?” confused-Steve asked, fixing Tony with a knowing look as he fiddled with an electric kettle and little packet of tea bags.

And, ugh, this guy really had Tony’s number. “The whole we’re-all-gonna-die thing kinda killed the mood,” he improvised, gesturing in a way he hoped seemed natural. “They did, uh, brief you on that part, right?”

Confused-Steve chuckled. “Yeah. Can’t say I understood most of it, but I got the gist. How’s the, your, team dealing with all this?”

This was why Tony did the Iron Man thing instead of the spy thing. He needed to tell him what he wanted to hear so that he’d think Tony was on his side. He needed this guy to trust him and to think that Tony trusted him in return. “There’s so many of us to choose from right now, it’s a little tricky to keep track,” seemed a safe start. “I’ve got no read on any of the Natashas” —he was proud he remembered to hide the fact that there was anything unusual happening (or not happening) with Natasha— “but the Clints don’t seem too worried about her and they’re taking it in stride. The Thors are just excited that all the Janes they meet are gaga about him. The Bruces are tired, but no one’s Hulked out. God, can you imagine? There must be dozens of them in the tower _right now_ , so I’m calling that a win.”

The Hulk part had spilled out, his usual babble of hypotheticals and concern for Bruce, but once it was out he was sort of proud that he’d managed to introduce a scary enhanced person into the conversation.

Confused-Steve had that crease between his eyebrows now, the one that either meant he was thinking or that Tony had done something horrible—or both—but he sat down and passed Tony his mug of tea, saying, “And how are you holding up with all this?”

“Oh, you know me,” Tony said into his tea, blowing on it to cool it and give his mouth something to do when he wasn’t talking.

“I do,” confused-Steve said. The crease was gone—and was that fondness in his voice? Maybe this was Tony’s opening.

“Hey, I also wanted to talk to you to thank you for that lead on the device.” Tony squinted over his tea. “We’d all be screwed without it. It looked like you guys were, uh, trying to do something pretty specific with it. You don’t have to tell me, unless you think it would help with figuring this out. If it’s ’cause there’s something going on back on your turf, if you need backup, you just gotta ask. We’ve got Avengers to spare.”  

“It’s not your fight, Tony,” confused-Steve said, which wasn’t an answer.

“It doesn’t seem like our universes are all that different,” Tony answered, which wasn’t true at all. His Steve was his teammate, barely his friend, and this one was in love with his Tony. This one smiled at him and held him, and okay, sometimes he held him too tight. He was hurting, misguided, and _confused_ , because why else would Steve Rogers, Captain America, who fought for everyone and hated bullies, treasured every living creature and rescued kittens from trees—probably, Tony was still looking for the footage—want to hurt so many people?

“Maybe not,” confused-Steve said, and then pulled Tony into a conversation about their two universes.

Tony, god help him, answered his questions honestly, at a loss for how to keep straight an entire lifetime’s worth of lies or how he would even begin to craft them into something that this Steve wanted to hear. They talked about the Avengers’ missions and working with the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Inhumans, and SHIELD, and hopefully nothing Tony was saying was inspiring this Steve to plot further murders or something. There were some names Tony didn’t know yet—Stephen Strange, Spiderman, Carol Danvers—and some Steve didn’t know yet—Deadpool, Lorelei, Antman, Daredevil—but they had enough in common to last them through a whole basket of little pre-packaged pretzels and crackers.

“You know, Tony,” confused-Steve said after a while. “None of this is your fault. All of us being here in the same universe, I mean.” Tony stared at him. “I know you probably blame yourself, since you’re the one who was working on the device in my universe, and everyone here is counting on you to figure out how to send us all back. But that shouldn’t be all on you, okay? And anyway, I’m the one—it was my idea to use it.”

Finally, they were getting somewhere.

Confused-Steve was still talking. “There was this one time, a few months after we got together, I was so scared. There was this Kree attack, and Tony had been kidnapped, and—oh my god, Tony, I’m so sorry, did I say something? Are you okay?” He was wrapping himself around Tony again, whispering, “Shh, shh, it’s okay, I’ve got you, relax,” like that was easy to do. His arms were over Tony’s shoulders, and his hands were on him. Those hands could crush the life out of him several times over before Jarvis could get enough gas in the room to knock him out, and yesterday those hands had been so good and sure, bringing him to climax again and again. So Tony shut his eyes and let himself imagine that this was the Steve that he knew, the Steve he shared a tower with and worked with—the Steve he needed so badly, dreamed about and loved. He let himself pretend that this was everything he wanted.

It must have worked, because confused-Steve let him go, his fingertips now just brushing his wrists. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just wanted you to know that you don’t have to do everything yourself. I’m here for you, okay?”

“Okay,” Tony repeated, feeling utterly lost.

“I know you’re a good person, Tony. A good version of you. That’s part of why we picked this universe,” confused-Steve said.

Finally. Jackpot.

 

“The device can be used to peek into other universes,” Tony began. After a protracted back-and-forth with SHIELD, he’d convinced them to send the device to his workshop. Then, some hours running tests and confirming his hunches later, he’d convened another meeting. The team was sitting around the kitchen table again, and someone had made pasta. “Part of it is this sort-of camera that can peek through the multiverse. Sort of, not really, but close enough. Anyway, once I knew that, a lot of other parts of it started to make sense. So! I’ve figured it out. We can start sending everyone back.”

It had already started to make sense while he was still in confused-Steve’s rooms, but he hadn’t been able to bolt right away. He had to stay and make conversation, to listen to this confused-Steve, this not-Steve, tell him how wonderful he was, all while taking apart and putting the device back together in his head.

“Oh thank god,” Clint said. “And Natasha?”

“It should be the same,” Tony said. “As far as the device is concerned, she’s already two people. It doesn’t really worry about how many of the atoms it needs there are, as long as they’re the right ones. If we’re right and they were trying to _get_ our Natasha, that would be where they went wrong—they would need to come here and get her, so when they tried to program it to take her, it sent their Natasha here instead.”

“Well reasoned, my friend,” Thor said heartily.

“I knew you could do it, Tony,” Steve said, and instead of appreciating it, Tony thought about how much he sounded like confused-Steve when he said nice things. Tony avoided replying by taking a too-large bite of a meatball.

“That does mean, though, right, that whoever has the device, in whatever universe, could see what we’re doing right now,” Clint said.

“Yeahhh,” Tony admitted. “Good news though, no audio. It’s tricky to navigate, to select a universe, and once you have, there’s not a lot of range outside of wherever the device is in a given universe. Well, it’s possible there’s a way to boost the range, but then you’d have an entire universe, and you’d have to get to the part you want to see. Okay, well, it’d be a little easier than that for another me, since he’d just be navigating through SHIELD, or now, the tower. But still, you can’t really zoom in very far, and the screen is tiny. Even if he’s able to navigate around the tower, and was lucky enough to be watching whoever has been doing the most successful work on the device, he still wouldn’t have complete data. And he definitely wouldn’t know what we’re talking about right now, even if he was pointing it at this very room.” The tests to determine definitively that there was absolutely no audio had been nerve-wracking—because yeah, trying to prove a negative, not really an easy gig.

“I have news too,” Bruce said, twiddling his fork and fiddling with his spaghetti. “We’ve been studying the—well, it’s like a field, basically, of where the connections are happening between the other universes and ours. Since we had an idea of which universe it was coming from, we were able to pinpoint the device on their end. It’s in communication with the one here that until today was still at the SHIELD offices. They’re connected, across all the universes. That’s part of how we were able to find the one in theirs.”

“Does that help us?” Clint asked.

“Well, the way the thing needs to be calibrated, it looks like it was meant to be taken with you, if you were using it to travel between universes. Otherwise you’d need to find another device in the universe you were visiting, if you wanted to get back to yours,” Bruce answered, scrubbing at the table with a napkin where he’d splattered marinara.

“So if the device in a given universe is gone, the people there can’t take anything from ours or visit anyone else’s?” Steve said slowly.

“That’s the idea, yeah,” Bruce agreed.

“Then it is plain,” Thor rumbled. “We send everyone to their home realms and destroy the device that we possess here! Then, if a Steve and Natasha are indeed plotting against us or others, they will be unable to visit our universe without becoming trapped, or to steal away our Natasha or anyone else.”

Tony shook his head. “We need to get rid of the one _there_ ,” he said. “Otherwise, they could still go to another universe where the device exists. Ideally we’d steal it, not just destroy it. If they have the materials, they could re-create it. But some of the elements it’s made out of aren’t found anywhere in our solar system, or, as far as we know, Asgard, so if the materials are gone, no matter how good their specs are, they’ll be screwed. It’s pretty bonkers it ended up on our planet at all, honestly.”

“Okay,” Clint said. “So, before we start sending people back, we go through to their universe, steal their device, and use it to leave.”

“At last, a genuine battle of strength in which we can all participate!” Thor said eagerly.

“Not so fast, big guy,” Tony said. “Since the densest part of the field is in the tower, that means their device is probably in their tower, right?”

“Right, pretty much definitely,” Bruce agreed. “Which means, they’ll have the same, if not more, security measures in place that we do. If we’re right about their motives, if Thor or I or maybe even Clint show up there, Jarvis and any other muscle they have there would have us on lockdown before we could get close enough,” he went on, and Tony knew he was thinking about the Hulk-buster armor. “We could try to fight our way through, but…”

“That’s right,” Steve said. “Brute force isn’t the way to go here. It’s gotta be stealth, at least as a first try. They could take out too many of us, and too many civilians, if we try it another way.”  

“It does seem a shame to have so many Thors around and not throw them at our problems,” Clint said.

“That is kind of you to say,” Thor said.

“No, see, I’m not saying that thirty Mjölnirs wouldn’t do the trick eventually,” Bruce said. “I’m saying, any of those Thors get hurt, that’s on us. We have to tell their Janes and everyone else what happened. And it’s not their fight.”

“I am confident that any in this tower who bear my name would gladly lay down their lives to help save the people of Midgard,” Thor said. “But I begin to see your point.”

“And we’re not even going to entertain the idea of sending the Hulk on a heist in a populated office building in midtown,” Bruce said. “We can’t think of these people as expendable just because they’re duplicates or not from our universe.”

“So, okay, it can’t be me or Thor or Bruce or Hulk,” Clint sighed. “Do we know what’s going on with their Nat? Where she is when she’s not our Natasha, and where our Natasha is when she’s not, you know, herself?”

“As far as we can tell, both Natashas are—for lack of a better word— _in_ ‘our Natasha,’” Bruce answered. “But only one of them can manifest—or be in control, if you like—at a time.”

“So their Natasha is gone! That means we can send Nat, right? They wouldn’t even question her if she’s the one who came through. You said you could separate them, right, so we can send our Nat there?”

“We’d be sending them exactly what they were after in the first place,” Bruce said.

“We’d be sending the most qualified person for the job,” Clint insisted.

“One part of the job,” Steve said. “Unless you can get Natasha up to speed on operating the device?” he looked at Tony.

Tony was already shaking his head. “I could, in a month, maybe two weeks. Not in time,” he said.

“Uh yeah, so, you’re going? Like their Jarvis wouldn’t notice if a second you materializes in the building?” Clint’s eyebrows rose. “What’s the cover story for coming through with Nat?”

“Me,” said Steve. “I’ll pretend to be the other me. He’s already shown he’ll use our Tony to his advantage. Anyone there who’s working with them will have to follow my lead, and I’ll tell them our Tony agreed to help, that he figured out something about the machine that theirs didn’t. Which is true, anyway.”

“No offense, Steve—” Clint started to say.

“I can do it,” Steve said. “What other choice do we have? If we do it right, it won’t even have to be for long.”

“And Natasha will be there,” Bruce pointed out.

“Small mercy,” Clint muttered.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Barton,” Steve said, starting to look agitated.

“I don’t think you have as full a grasp of this situation as you think you do, Cap,” Clint said, getting to his feet. “Why don’t you go over all the footage of the guy you’re gonna be impersonating and talk to me after.”

Tony froze. What friendship he had with his own Steve was already being shredded by the appearance of all of these loony (and, let’s not forget, he reminded himself, possibly genocidal) Tony-sexual Steves. The last thing he needed was for Steve to watch a video of him confessing his love for Steve and then having sex with his double. “I don’t know who you’re trying to help here, Clint—” he started to say.

“Whatever, why do I even bother,” Clint spat, and walked out.

“You probably should watch some of the footage,” Bruce admitted, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “To get an idea of what he’s like. I’m sure Jarvis can edit out anything that’s not, um, strictly relevant.”

Traitor, Tony thought.


	3. Chapter 3

 

They all needed a few hours to prep for the mission, and Tony tried not to think about how Steve was spending the time, to concentrate instead on the work he needed to do. Which was extensive. All the better to distract him, right?

One part he delegated to the other Tonys and any Bruces who wanted to help: making a portable, instantaneous version of the RNA scanners he’d hastily set up all over the tower. Once in the other universe, they’d need to be sure who they were interacting with at any given time. He’d also assigned them, as extra credit, the maybe-impossible task of finding a way to mask or obscure a person’s quantum signature.

He was stuck calibrating the device, which was a pain in the ass. Whatever culture had created the user interface had been going for something minimal and perhaps intuitive, but their intuition was nothing like a human’s. Which meant that Tony was keeping running lists in his head of every function that every tap, touch, or swivel he made could trigger. One advantage was that the device did have the ability to keep what Tony thought of as “profiles” of different universes. It didn’t use the quantum RNA signature that his scanners were tracking, which was interesting—whatever method it was using to differentiate the universes was still mysterious to him—but it had clear locks on which groups of people were from which universe, and from there he could easily navigate into the visual observation of that universe.

The only thing of any interest he saw in the universe that confused-Steve and other-Natasha were from was in his counterpart’s bedroom there. The rest was the routine mundanity of the tower and the city. The other Tony was working on his version of the device from his bed, seemingly because he was heavily injured; one arm was in a brace, there were bandages on his face, and he moved gingerly. The duvet was scattered with takeout boxes, pill bottles, a tablet, and an array of tiny screwdrivers. He looked frustrated and exhausted, and Tony wished he could hear what he was muttering to himself.

It was time to set things in motion, and Tony reluctantly turned away from the image of his other self tinkering with the device. Soon after Jarvis alerted him that Tony was ready, Steve was at the door to Tony’s workshop, wearing flannel Iron Man pajama pants and an untucked button-down.

“Please don’t say anything about my outfit,” Steve muttered after he passed the scan and came in, not meeting Tony’s eyes. “I thought I should wear more or less what he was wearing when he came through, and it seemed like he really likes these pajamas. I think he’d like to keep them. Uh, Jarvis found me a pair.”

So he’d watched at least some of the footage. Instead of responding to that, Tony said, “I’m ready to separate the Natashas,” and he called up Jarvis’ camera feed of her rooms on his monitors.

“How’s she doing?” Steve asked, pulling up a chair beside Tony’s.

It was harder to concentrate on the screens with Steve right beside him, wearing the Iron Man pants that confused-Steve had been wearing the day they’d had sex and probably as painfully aware of that fact as Tony. “Well, more and more people are coming through to our universe, and the same thing is sort of happening to her—the two consciousnesses are switching off more and more frequently. It’s down to just a couple minutes at a time now.”

“That must feel bizarre,” Steve said.

Bizarre like watching a sex tape of someone who looked identical to you and a guy you’d thought of as just your annoying teammate, Tony thought. Now that Steve’s attention was on the video feed, Tony let himself glance at him. He still looked exhausted, and he was holding himself more tensely than usual. “Yeah, I can’t even imagine,” Tony said. “She doesn’t seem too bothered, though.”

“It _is_ Natasha,” Steve agreed.

“Yeah. She hasn’t said much, just asked for some food and books she wanted. She talked to Clint for a while, but they couldn’t discuss anything remotely classified, so, not much there. They played video games for a bit. Riveting footage, that right there. A couple times Jarvis thinks he caught the switch happening on camera—she’d be in the middle of reading a book and have to flip back to an earlier place.”

“And you can, uh, ‘separate’ them from here?” Steve asked. Tony thought he might be avoiding Tony’s eyes, but since he was mostly avoiding Steve’s, it was hard to tell, really.

“Yep. I have a sort of target lock on her, both of her. This thing”—he gestured at the blocky gadget—“tracks everyone from every universe that’s here. Well, everyone from every universe and every universe everywhere actually, but, relevance. So I figured out the sequence—a program, basically—to put the two consciousnesses back in two bodies. As far as this thing’s concerned, it’s not creating matter, or even really moving it, not in the three dimensions we understand, anyway. I could do it from anywhere, any universe. It’s like, um, Bruce called it a field. It’s like that kind of. Maybe it’s more helpful to think of them as like, invisible portals. Right now I’m making one just for her.”

Steve nodded, looking more together now that he had a mission to run. “Do it.”

Tony did.

There was one Natasha, sitting in an armchair, turning the pages of a heavy paperback. Then there were two.

“There you are,” one Natasha said, sitting down in the chair opposite.

“In the flesh,” the other replied, setting her book on a coffee table.

“We’re in your universe? What happened?”

“Yep. And I don’t know. They haven’t told me much. What do you want?” Natasha, the real Natasha, asked.

“Your help,” she replied.

A single eyebrow rose. “Go on.”

The other Natasha half-shrugged. “A threat needs to be eliminated. You have the skills to assist us. And a profile we know and can trust.”

“What’s the threat?”

“The usual. Aliens, Inhumans, mutants, enhanced individuals. Their very existence threatens the rest of us.”

“Well, fuck,” Tony said.

“I really hate being right sometimes,” Steve said quietly. He looked a little smaller, then, like the photos Tony had seen of him from before Project Rebirth, and Tony wished he was someone who could offer Steve some comfort over the fact that in another universe, Steve had killed his best friend and planned on murdering even more people.

The two Natashas were still talking. The not-Natasha revealed frustrating little of what she and confused-Steve—or maybe now it was just evil-Steve—had planned, though it seemed to have something to do with getting more of the helicarriers she and evil-Steve had destroyed. She had lots to offer, though, when it came to details on atrocities that non-humans had supposedly committed against humans. The discussion came to a close. Real-Natasha appeared thoughtful but convinced, then excused herself.

“Okay Jarvis, tell the real Natasha to meet us in my rooms,” Tony said. “You ready, Cap?”

“As much as I’ll ever be. Tony. I wanted to—” he started to say, chewing on his lips.

“Let’s focus on the mission for now, okay?” Tony said, already heading for the door.

He could guess what Steve wanted to say—Steve was going to let him down gently, was going to try to spare Tony’s feelings, was somehow taking the time and energy to be considerate on top of everything else he had to deal with. Tony was just an idiot with a crush. It was Steve’s whose archnemesis was presumably controlling SHIELD, the organization he’d been trusting since he’d awakened in this century. It was Steve who had Barnes to worry about, somehow alive and enduring decades of brainwashing. It was Steve who had what was basically an _evil twin_ who they now had to defeat, Steve who had to deal with a teammate who had a ridiculous obsession with him. And—cherry on top—he’d learned of Tony’s obsession because Tony had been stupid enough to have sex with said evil twin. Only Steve would be compassionate enough to even spare a thought for Tony’s feelings at this point, and that level of sympathy was _not_ something Tony could deal with right before an op.

Steve pursed his lips. “Okay. Whatever you say.”

 

After Steve and Tony went over the plan with her, real-Natasha frowned minutely and said, “You’re sure you can trust me?”

“You’re definitely the you from our universe,” Tony said.

“That’s not what I asked,” she pointed out.

“I trust you with this as much as I have with any other mission we’ve been on,” Steve said, looking her in the eyes. “This isn’t the first time I’ve watched you lie or go undercover. We’re a team, and I believe in that.”

“And that’s good enough for me,” Tony agreed.

A look flickered across Steve’s face at that, but then he shook it off.

“I’d feel better if you could bring the shield,” Natasha admitted.

“Me too,” Steve agreed. “But he didn’t bring it with him, so I can’t either.”

“Okay, before we go, I’m going to send everyone back,” Tony said, already swiping and tapping at the gadget. “Except for the Steve and Natasha from the universe we’re about to visit, obviously. Jarvis, give everyone a heads up?”

“Certainly, Sir.”

Tony hadn’t found a way to “select all” or anything like that, so it was a tedious process to pick each group of visitors. Dispatching them to their home universes was easy, though; the device automatically matched each person to their own universe, so once Tony had a group identified on the menus, it was simple to send them there. A half an hour later, Tony said, “Sorry, I guess I didn’t think about how long this part would take.” Or maybe he had, but it was nice having Steve there while he did it.

“It’s fine,” Steve said easily. Natasha looked as serene as ever.

Finally, the only inter-universal visitors in the tower were confused-Steve and the other Natasha. “Does it look clear on your end, Jarvis?” Tony asked.

“Yes. Everyone who does not originate in this universe has, if you will pardon the expression, left the building.”

“Awesome,” Tony said, though he was dreading what came next.

“Great,” Steve agreed, looking pale and strained himself. “Everyone ready?”

“Let’s go,” Natasha said.

Tony ran through the sequence on the device. They stood in his bedroom, and then, it shifted. They were still standing in his bedroom, but there was another him, sitting up in bed on a pile of pillows, holding another version of the device.

“Finally,” said other-Tony. “What’s this, then? Why’d you bring him?” He gestured at real-Tony. “Where’s the other Nat? You got this, Jarvis?”

“Yes, Sir,” came Jarvis’ smooth voice, and Tony knew that meant that any number of weapons were targeted on all of them.

Steve was already moving, sitting down on the bed with other-Tony, brushing his fingers through his hair. Not-Tony barely even glanced at him, was still fixing Natasha and real-Tony with a stare. “They’re here to help,” Steve said easily. Then, just as they’d planned, he leaned in and whispered in not-Tony’s ear. It was inaudible to him and Natasha, but Tony knew it was _Reed Richards_.

Something relaxed in not-Tony. “Took you long enough,” he grumbled, but his eyes were smiling. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Steve said softly, taking not-Tony in his arms and kissing him. Tony watched as a fantasy came to life in front of his eyes—Steve in his bed, one hand on other-Tony’s hip, nibbling at his lips—and Tony had never felt that, not from the real Steve, had never been close enough to breathe him in.

“So, hey, you figured out how to narrow the device’s field,” not-Tony said when they broke apart, looking at real-Tony again, still fiddling with the gadget in his hands. Steve was so close to it, his fingers centimeters away where they were resting on other-Tony’s thighs.

“Yeah, hey, that’s why I’m here,” Tony replied, bouncing on his heels. “Help with calibration issues and all that. A few other Tonys and Bruces showed up in my tower, actually, so, uh, I had a head start. But yeah, once I figured out the ventral sequencing was overloaded, I was able to get the resonance cascade to—”

“Of course,” not-Tony said, nodding and looking at his device accusingly. “Dammit, why didn’t I think of that?”

“You would’ve,” Steve said, reaching a hand to touch not-Tony’s face—and did not-Tony flinch?—and resting his forehead against not-Tony’s. “We’ve got everything we need. It’s going to go so much faster now, with all of us working on it.”

“Hmm. And, the, uh, other Natasha?”

“Wasn’t interested,” Natasha replied. “But we’ve already got some backups lined up.”

Not-Tony paled. “Shit,” he said, glancing rapidly back and forth between Steve and the device he held with white-knuckled hands. “We were—I was so sure—”

“It’s fine, Tony,” Steve said, so assuredly that for a moment, Tony believed him. “It worked out, didn’t it?” Steve kept nuzzling not-Tony, his eyes on the device still in not-Tony’s hands. His hand inched towards it.

“Yeah,” not-Tony said slowly, frowning. “You’re still on board, doppelgänger?”

“I’m just following Steve’s lead,” Tony said.

Not-Tony laughed hollowly. “That, I believe,” he said, and swiped something on the device. There were two Steves and two Natashas, and then everything went black.

 

Tony awoke in a room that looked a lot like the quarters he’d set up for Steve, though there were dust motes sparkling in the evening sunbeams and a musty smell that suggested no one had stayed in this room for some months. He was in bed, under a red and white striped blanket he remembered ordering for Steve’s rooms as a joke, and there was a Steve sitting beside him.

“Shhh, you’re okay,” the Steve said. “Sorry about knocking you out.”

“Where’s Steve? And Natasha?” Tony asked, sitting up and taking stock of the situation. He was essentially a prisoner, whether he had the trappings of it not; he may not be bound, but other-Jarvis and not-Steve could incapacitate him again so easily it was almost a joke.

“They didn’t want to help, so we sent them home,” not-Steve said.

“Just like that, huh?” Tony said, hoping it sounded like he believed him. Which he didn’t, not for a second. God, he hoped they were okay.

“Of course,” not-Steve said easily. “I’m sorry that the Steve from your universe wanted to go back without you. But I know you’re going to help us, Tony.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah, of course,” Tony replied, thinking quickly. “I’m on your side, Cap, always. You know that.”

“I know,” not-Steve said, grinning one of his incandescent grins that for a moment, made Tony want to melt into him.

“Uh, let’s get to it, then,” Tony said, pulling the blanket off and starting to push himself out of bed.

Not-Steve grabbed his wrist. “Wait.”

Tony froze.

“You’re afraid of me.”

Yeah, Tony should have known he would be utterly transparent to this guy. “I’m not,” he lied. “I just, I know it’s not really me you want.”

“I want Tony Stark,” not-Steve said simply.

“You want my help. That’s not the same thing.”

“I want your trust, Tony,” he whispered. “You’re the smartest person I know. The bravest. The best. It means everything to me that you’re on my side.”

Tony shook his head mutely.

“Is this because I’m not him? It didn’t seem to bother you the other day,” he said with a little smile. And Tony hadn’t minded, not when he’d thought this was just some Steve Rogers who wanted him, who he’d never see again. Not-Steve tucked a strand of hair behind Tony’s ear. “I’m just like him, Tony. Except I’m not going to leave you behind.”

“I can’t,” he said weakly.

“I know you want this,” not-Steve said, his face so close to Tony’s, and Tony did want this. But not _this_ , not with this Steve—not here, not like this. “Let yourself have this.” His face was so beautiful, like he was carved out of marble. Tony couldn’t stop himself from looking at it, at the dip of his cheekbone, the curve of his jawline, couldn’t stop himself from feeling Steve’s breath against his skin. Now one hand was on Tony’s thigh, the other pulling him closer.

And maybe it would be easiest to just let it happen, to enjoy the parts that _were_ the same as the Steve he knew and wanted. It would be better than being frightened, better than the feeling of tightness in his entire body, the heightened awareness of how close their bodies were pressed, of how huge Steve’s hands were, of how he’d seen Steve break a man’s arm like it was a popsicle stick. So he didn’t resist when the hand on his thigh wound up to his waistband and began undoing his belt, didn’t pull away when he felt Steve’s mouth slotted against his.

“Steve,” Tony choked out when the kiss subsided, and he was out of words, hoping, begging that his meaning was clear from the way he said his name.

But it wasn’t, or Steve didn’t care, because his belt was gone and his pants were undone, and one of those giant hands was on his cock. He was hard, and he knew it was from fear, but he hated it anyway. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on how good it felt, the gentle strokes, the teasing around his balls, the care and tenderness of the touch. But his mind wouldn’t stop reminding him of everything else—of who was touching him, of how he couldn’t get away—and he was shivering. His chest ached and his body wasn’t responding to his commands. Tony buried his head in not-Steve’s chest, trying to hide himself, to not have to look. He let out a whimper, and not-Steve must have taken it as a sound of pleasure because he was pulling his face away and grinning at him, his hands still all over Tony’s body.

He said, “Tony, god, you’re so beautiful like this,” and if not-Steve weren’t holding him, he’d have crumbled. Because he wasn’t even trying to hide the look on his face or the way he was trembling, but not-Steve hadn’t stopped—and how could this be anyone with Steve’s face or voice or anything in common with him when all he was doing was hurting someone? Steve wanted to help everyone, believed the best of everyone, had given his life so that people could be free, had hid in his room for days after he’d accidentally broken one of Clint’s ribs during training, had offered Hydra agents a chance to do better, and he’d never, ever do this to Tony, to anyone.

“I, uh, I just, thought of something,” Tony said with effort.

Not-Steve didn’t pause, kept trailing little kisses along Tony’s shoulders, kept grinding his hips against Tony, kept running his hands up and down Tony’s arms in delicate caresses. Tony kept talking, willed what he said to be true. “With the device. Hey. Easy there, soldier,” he managed to say.

Not-Steve looked him in the eyes now, his lips wet and red, his breath heavy, and his hands stopped moving, so that was something. Tony pitched all of his relief into the smile he gave. This Steve would know his smiles, know the one that he wore for cameras, the one he smiled at home, would probably even know the little smiles he usually hid under the Iron Man faceplate. This Steve must know the ones that Tony saved just for Steve, so this smile had to look real. “Hey, we’ve got plenty of time for this later, right?” he said. “I was promised a threesome, wasn’t I? But yeah. I can use it to pull their device into this universe. They won’t be able to come back. They won’t be able to bother us again.”

Not-Steve sighed but pulled back and his mouth quirked up on one side as he said, “You’re lucky I get a kick out of being teased.”

“Oh, I’m going to have so much fun with you,” Tony heard himself say as they both stood.

Not-Steve held the door open for him, because he was a gentleman, apparently—an evil, genocidal gentleman who had just plowed past all of Tony’s inarticulate boundaries.

“Reed Richards,” Tony said, and somehow grinned at him as he walked through.

 

On the elevator to the workshop, not-Steve kept his hands to himself, but he said, “I can’t let you handle the device directly, not yet. You understand, right Tony? It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just a precaution.”

“Yeah, of course,” Tony said. “I’m sure it’ll make, your, uh, the other Tony, feel better, too.”

Not-Steve laughed a small, twinkling laugh. “Yeah, we’ve got lots to negotiate, don’t we?”

The workshop looked nearly identical to the one that Tony had been in just hours previous, maybe a few more armchairs than his own and some of the screens set at different angles. It was silent, though, other than the gust of not-Tony’s hands over the holograms.

“No music?” Tony asked, wheeling a chair up beside not-Tony.

“It, uh, bothers Natasha,” not-Tony muttered, fluttering a hand toward her.

She looked up from the tablet she was reading. “Don’t mind me. I’m just here to help keep an eye on you boys,” she said.

“It’s nice spending time together,” not-Steve said with a smile, settling onto a couch nearby. “Babe, this Tony says he can pull the device from other universes into this one.”

“Hey, nice,” not-Tony said, turning his full attention to Tony.

“Yeah,” Tony said quickly, pulling up diagrams of the device on the screen in front of him. “They’re prismatically networked, right, so—”

Not-Tony was nodding and tapping into the gadget. “So if we set up parameters for it to stimulate the analogous field—”

“Exactly,” Tony agreed. “We just need to account for the dimensional gap—”

Once he got into it, working with another him was kind of like working with Jarvis. Well, there was a Jarvis here too, though one who didn’t seem to like him very much, judging by the snippy answers he kept getting. The hardest part was ignoring not-Steve, for all that the man sat quietly on the couch, reading through some paper files. The thing was that his idea was real, and he couldn’t think of a way to stall the other Tony that wouldn’t be hopelessly transparent, so either his chance would have to come soon, or he was royally fucking himself.

They were working on aligning the adaptive fields the device produced and calibrating them to Tony’s home universe when not-Tony started talking about the problem that had started this whole mess in the first place. “I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out,” he said weakly. “I should have known it was on too broad a spectrum. When Natasha disappeared, it should have tipped me off to what was happening. The resonance polarity—”

“We’ll deal with it later,” not-Steve said. His voice was casual, but now not-Tony looked even sicker than before, and he jerked like he’d been slapped. Tony thought he might know what had tipped not-Tony off to the fact that the wrong Steve had come into his bedroom.

A few hours later, not-Steve wandered over and put one arm over each Tony’s shoulders. “Hungry?”

“Not really,” Tony said vaguely, at the same time that not-Tony said, “Sure.”

“Sushi?” not-Steve suggested as he peered at the graphs and schematics they were examining.

“Sure,” not-Tony said again.

“Do you have that place, the one by the flower stand, you know—?” Tony waved a hand.

“We sure do,” not-Steve said with a smile. He straightened and moved his hands to muss both Tonys’ hair as he turned back to the couch. “Jarvis?”

“Placing the usual order, Captain Rogers,” Jarvis said. “And double of Mr. Stark’s.”

“Add a seaweed salad to that, would you?” not-Natasha said without looking up.

“Certainly, Ms. Romanoff.”

After the food arrived, Tony figured it was his best opportunity to make small talk. “So, hey, I asked a few guys from other universes, but I wanna hear from you—how’d you land a guy like Steve?”

Not-Tony swallowed his bite of sashimi and looked at not-Steve. “Yeah, I, uh, heard that your, the Steve from your universe didn’t wanna, uh, stick around.”

“We were, uh, just starting to get together, back home,” Tony said, remembering what he’d said to not-Steve. “And I guess it wasn’t, y’know, enough. So I just wonder what’s different about here? How’d you two kids get so lucky?”  

“Fair enough,” not-Tony said. “It did take some getting used to.”

“He’s quite the catch,” Tony agreed.

“Aw, you’re sweet,” not-Steve chimed in.

“It’s just so easy to feel,” Tony went on. “Like someone as good as he is couldn’t love someone like me. I know, I know—feelings. I just, hey, bear with me, okay, I might never see my Steve again. I’ll stop soon, just give me a bit to process or whatever, and we can get back to the science.”

“He’s definitely gaga over you,” not-Natasha said, a note of approval in her voice.

Tony reached for another roll with his chopsticks, and as he did his elbow swiped a pile of soy sauce packets and pickled ginger off the table, along with the device. “Shit,” he said, but he made no move to get it. “Sorry.” He popped the roll into his mouth.

“I got it,” not-Tony said, already gathering up the packets up, and the device with it.

“Anyway, uh, I know this is weird, and seriously, I’m almost done. I don’t know about you, but I had posters of Captain America growing up, I had his comics. He’s a hero, always helping the little guy—hell, he used to be a little guy, he’d know about bullies, wouldn’t he—and I just, I see this guy, here, and how devoted he is to you—”

“He is, isn’t he?” not-Tony agreed, his fingers brushing a dial on the device in his hands.

“And then there’s us, I mean, Merchant of Death, smartass, general fuck-up, not to mention slutbag—and I mean that in the most sex-positive way, but, you get me, right?—and I think, is this really Captain America, Sentinel of Liberty, who’s so utterly gone for Tony Stark?”

Not-Tony met his eyes and slid the device into his hands. Tony swiped at it, and hoped.

 

Tony was in his own workshop, still clutching the device. A Natasha was there, her eyes closed, her body still, her wrists and ankles in cuffs, and a Steve, coughing, doubled over, his own wrists and ankles bound in thick, shiny metal bands that Tony thought he may have invented.

“Jarvis?” Tony managed to stammer.

“Welcome home, Sir. I am pleased to report that the Captain Rogers and Ms. Romanoff present are the ones indigenous to this universe.”

“Why is he coughing?” Tony asked, running over. But Steve was already catching his breath. “Steve, are you okay?”

“I think they just kept the gas going the whole time,” Steve said weakly. “Didn’t seem like they had the formula down quite as well as you and Bruce.”

“Well, that’s what happens when you discriminate against giant green rage monsters,” Tony said. “These things are electromagnetic, I can turn them off, lemme just—” He stood again to get the equipment he needed. “Jarvis, how’s Natasha? Where’s everyone else?”

“Ms. Romanoff’s vitals are stable. She should return to consciousness within an hour,” Jarvis reported. “I have alerted Dr. Banner, Mr. Barton, and Thor of your return. They are en route now.”

“Good, good,” Tony said vaguely, working to deactivate the bands on Steve, who sputtered out with an occasional little cough now and then. Tony had them off and was working at the locks of Natasha’s cuffs when the others arrived. “Thank god. Hey, Barton, give me a hand?”

Clint was already walking toward her. “She okay?”

“Shit, sorry, yeah, she’s fine, just unconscious,” Tony said.

“You have returned victorious!” Thor said, crushing Tony in a hug.

“Yep,” Tony agreed breathlessly.

“Glad you’re all back in one piece,” Bruce said, looking between Tony and Steve.

“Me too,” Steve said, glancing at Tony.

“I’m a little surprised these guys were the type to take prisoners,” Clint was saying. He’d gotten the cuffs off of Natasha and was propping her into a sitting position. “Not complaining though.”

“They must’ve wanted more intel on our universe,” Steve said after he was released from his own hug with Thor. “Same as us with all our visitors.”

“I am pleased they are vanquished,” Thor said heartily.

“Well, they’re, uh, not universe-hopping any time soon. I dunno about ‘vanquished,’” Tony said, hugging himself.

“You can tell us later, Tony. We, uh, just ordered some sushi,” Bruce said. “You hungry?”

“God, no,” Tony said. “I’m, uh, going to, just,” and he fled the room.

 

“Jarvis?”

“Sir?”

“Is he still outside my door?”

“He is, Sir.”

Tony swore. “Doesn’t he take bathroom breaks?” he muttered.

“I doubt you could make it to the kitchen and back without encountering him, regardless,” Jarvis said drily.

“Ugh, probably because you’d tell him when I left, traitor,” Tony said, running his fingers through his hair. “Can I get drone delivery? That’s a thing, right, I order my coffee and my donuts, a drone comes to my window, and I never have to leave my room again? Ugh, why did I agree to lock down the suits?”

“I believe promises were made to Dr. Banner that you would not make any flight plans in your current emotional state,” Jarvis answered.

“‘Current emotional state,’ what an ass,” Tony mimicked. “Ugh, maybe I can guilt Bruce into bringing me coffee and breakfast—”

“If I may make a suggestion, Sir,” Jarvis interrupted smoothly. “Captain Rogers has two iced Americanos and an assortment of pastries with him. If you speak with him—”

“Traitor,” Tony said again. “ _Fine_.” He knew he was pouting, but he figured, after the last few days, he was entitled.

He opened the door. “I really don’t want to talk right now,” he said, taking a cup out of Steve’s hand and shoving the straw into his mouth.

“Then will you just listen?” Steve asked. To Tony’s dismay, he was already brushing by and coming in.

“I can’t stop you coming into my rooms and talking, apparently,” Tony snapped, knowing he was being uncharitable. “Give me,” he said, and Steve handed him the bag of pastries.

Tony flopped down on a couch and tried to savor his Americano. “Well?”

Steve had his hands in his pockets and his shoulders were so tense, they almost reached his ears. He had that crease between his eyebrows as he said, “Tony, I think you’re amazing.”

Tony almost screamed. “Fuck you,” he said instead.

“I thought you were going to listen?” Steve said, and he sounded sad.

“Fuck listening. Fuck you. I don’t have to listen to this,” Tony spat. “I don’t need your pity, Rogers.”

“That’s not what this is,” Steve insisted.

“I know exactly what this is.”

“Tony, I’ve been in love with you for months. Longer, probably. I’ve been falling for you since we met.”

“You don’t have to say that,” Tony shook his head. “Don’t do this.”

“I never said anything,” Steve continued, “because I didn’t think you felt the same way. And if you don’t now, that’s okay, I’d be happy just to have the honor of being your friend. But the way you were talking to some of those guys, from, from the other universes, it was like you don’t even think we’re friends.”

“Fine, we’re friends. Can you stop lying to me now?”

“I’m not lying to you,” Steve sighed. “I don’t want to do anything to hurt you or”—he swallowed— “scare you. But I have to talk to you, okay. You said—you told that other Steve, the one who—”

“The evil one,” Tony said.

“Okay, the evil one. You told him that you wanted to be with me.”

“Of course I want to be with you!” Tony barked.

“Uh, then—” Steve stepped toward him. Tony flinched, and Steve froze. “Why couldn’t you tell _me_ that? Was it really easier to talk to him than me?” Steve asked quietly.

“Um, _no_ ,” Tony said, his eyes wild. “I said that to him after we knew he—Steve, I know _you_ don’t want to murder me! Well, mostly. No, no—I’m sorry, that wasn’t funny, I know you don’t want to hurt me, Steve.”

“I really, really don’t. Tony, why do you think they chose this universe?”

“He probably saw how lonely and fucked up I am and knew he could just swoop in, turn my head, and I’d do whatever he wanted,” Tony muttered.

“Is that really what you think?”

“What _else_ am I supposed to think?”

“Tony. Do you think you’re not good enough for me?”

“I know I’m not.”

“Tony,” Steve’s voice was plaintive. “Of course you—how can you say that?”

Tony jumped to his feet. “Do you know how I got back here?”

“How’d you get back here, Tony?” Steve stared at his feet.

“I convinced them that I was on their side—that I could—that I would help them with the device. I—the Steve there, he wanted to trust me, he,” Tony licked his lips. “He knew how to make me do what he wanted.”

“Tony, did he hurt you—”

Tony nearly jumped. “I’m talking right now, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve whispered.

“But they were careful, they wouldn’t let me touch the thing. I was working with the other me. The other you and the other Natasha and even Jarvis were all watching us. So when we were all just eating, and talking, I said to the other me, y’know, Captain America is so good, how’d he ever wind up falling for a guy like us? And the other me, he. He knew that the Steve there loved him, and that no one as good as you are, as that Steve was supposed to be, could really be with someone like us. He saw how broken, how far gone, Steve Rogers would have to be to end up loving Tony Stark. So he programmed the thing to send us all back and handed it to me.”

“Tony, I—do you really believe that?” Steve’s voice cracked.

“You come in here, and you repeat the same things that _he_ said to me—”

“I didn’t mean to—it doesn’t change how I feel, Tony, I still think you’re amazing—”

“Don’t,” Tony pleaded.

“So the only Steve Rogers who really love Tony Stark, they’re all evil, is that it?”

“Yes, that’s it! That Steve killed his best friend to save the Tony there, okay? And it destroyed him, it completely fucked him up, if he wasn’t already gone. That’s not you, Steve. You don’t have to want me just because _he_ was messed enough to want me. You’re not him, you’re not evil, so, can you leave now? Please?”

“That Steve and Tony from the universe where the Dodgers are still in Brooklyn are dating!”  

“Hey, I don’t know, maybe that Steve is evil too!” Tony said, throwing up his hands. “You’re—he’s—not even _evil_ , really, just really, really, hurt and confused. And ‘universe where the Dodgers are still in Brooklyn,’ um, don’t you mean the universe where Clint fights supervillains _wearing a sleeveless purple jumpsuit and a carnival mask_?!”

“Tony, you’re only proving my point,” Steve sighed. “You think that a guy who’s out to kill all enhanced humans in the multiverse can still be redeemed.”

“Probably just in his universe,” Tony corrected. “So hypocritical of him, right? Oh, wow, god, that guy must really hate himself. Shit, is that what this—you don’t—you know you’re a really good person, even without the serum, right Steve?”

“I’m trying to convince _you_ that _you’re_ a good person! I’m not perfect, okay, I’m not as good as you think I am. And I’m not expecting you to be perfect either. Anyone would be lucky to be with you.”

“Stop!” Tony knew his tone was approaching hysteria, and he didn’t care. “Stop saying the things that he said!”

“It’s true whether he said it or not.” Steve was staring at him with an intensity that Tony wouldn’t have known how to respond to in the best of circumstances, an intensity that was currently leading him to consider whether Jarvis would deploy a suit to save him if he jumped out of the closest window. “Tony, you’re brilliant, you’re a hero, you save people every day, and not just as Iron Man, but with all of the work that you do. I was wrong about you that day on—”

“Stop it!” Tony was too pissed off to control his volume any longer. He was yelling and possibly trembling, and he might have been more embarrassed if he wasn’t holding out hope that showing just how rattled he was might make Steve _stop_. “He said—that’s what _he_ said to me—”

“They’re the things that _I’m_ saying Tony—me, listen to me! I love you, I want to be with you, and you said you wanted to be with me too. If you could believe me, that I’d never hurt you like he—”

“If you’re not like him, you’d leave now. Like I asked you to.” Somehow, Tony’s voice remained level.

Steve’s breath caught, his eyes wide. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. He nodded, slowly backing toward the door.

Tony watched until Steve stepped out of the room, quietly shutting the door behind him. He sank back onto the couch and heard the crinkling of wax paper—the pastries. He pulled the bag out from between the couch cushions and inspected what was inside as he tried to shift into a comfortable position. He didn’t feel like eating anymore, but maybe getting some calories in him would cut down on the shaking and restlessness.

He’d finished a jelly donut and was starting on a chocolate croissant when he heard a faint knock on his door. “Fuck,” he mumbled, nearly dropping it in surprise.

“Mr. Barton is outside, Sir,” Jarvis said.

“Just him?” Tony asked.

“Captain Rogers is in his own quarters. Mr. Barton is unaccompanied,” Jarvis assured him.

Tony sighed. “Let him in, J.”

“Dude,” Clint said as he entered. “What did you do to Steve?” He bounced onto the couch beside Tony.

“Wow, you’re such a good friend, the way you give me the benefit of the doubt and take into account all the shit I’ve gone through in the last few days. Because if Steve’s in a mood, it must be _my_ fault.”

“He just walked past me looking like he’d watched someone put the Bill of Rights through a paper shredder,” Clint complained, reaching a hand into the bakery bag.

“Are you just here to insult me and steal my food?”

“Nah,” Clint replied through a mouthful of scone. “C’mon man, I know it’s been weird. Nat _hugged_ me this morning.” He shivered. “I can count on one hand how many times I’ve even seen her hug _anyone_ when it wasn’t part of a cover. And _then_ she said she’d be bummed out if I died.”

“Yeah, I’m so very sorry your gorgeous best friend hugged you and expressed positive feelings about your continued wellbeing.” Tony rolled his eyes.

“Dude, I’m trying to, like, commiserate and shit.” Clint wrinkled his nose. “We’re all dealing with this fucking multiverse weirdness, you know?”

“Fine, I’ll give you that. I talked to a Bruce from a universe where you were dead. It was...not an experience I’d care to repeat.”

“Yeah, _I_ talked to that Bruce, too,” Clint said. Tony winced in sympathy. “And a Thor and a Steve and a you from universes where I was dead. It was awkward as fuck.”

“Was it at least cool to know what everyone would say about you if you kicked the bucket?”

“Hell yeah it was,” Clint agreed. He dug into the bag for the glazed donut, eyeing Tony. “Okay, I’ve shared my feelings. Tell me about having sex with the evil clone of the guy you’re in love with.”

“I’m not in love with him,” Tony grumbled. “And he wasn’t a _clone,_ ” he felt compelled to add.

“Uh- _huh._ ”

“The sex part was fucking mind-blowing, and I can’t stop thinking about it, okay? Or did you want to hear about what Steve’s face looks like when—”

“Nope, nope, nope!” Clint made a zipping motion across his mouth. “Gonna stop you right there.”

“First you want to me to spill, now you say stop—”

“You’re insufferable, but I’m not going to leave you alone until I believe you’re okay. We’re a team, alright? You’re having a shitty time. I’ve got your back. It’s simple.” He shrugged.

“It’s not _simple_ ,” Tony insisted. “Steve’s freaking out that there’s a universe where he’s—you know— _genocidal._ And that here at home his childhood BFF is alive, not to mention, _oh yeah_ , SHIELD is probably overrun by fucking Hydra. He just had to pretend to be the maniac that’s in a relationship with a version of me, but he can’t even _imagine_ being an abusive asshole so he gave the whole thing away—”

“Woah, what?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what happened at least—the other Tony figured something was off. Based on everything else I saw, I figure his Cap would’ve freaked out at a lot more at how much he fucked up their plan.”

“Man, I _knew_ you guys would suck at undercover shit.”

“Steve couldn’t have known that’s how the other him would act,” Tony insisted. “But yeah, so, when he didn’t freak out the right way,” Tony continued, “he got gassed and kidnapped and stuck in a parallel universe with no idea what was going on. So now he has this dumb guilt thing where he thinks he needs to pretend he’s in love with me, because he thinks that’s going to make everything better somehow.”

Clint considered this. “So he said he loves you?” He whistled.

“Can we stop talking about this, please?”

“If you’re so sure he can’t even _imagine_ being like his evil twin, what’re you afraid of?”

Tony scoffed. “I’m not afraid of anything. I just don’t want his fucking pity.”

“Pity isn’t really Steve’s jam,” Clint said slowly.

“Guilt, pity, duty, some kind of penance, whatever. C’mon, we barely got along a few days ago, and now he says he’s in love with me? I’m not an idiot.”

“You kind of are.”

“So you _are_ just here to insult me and eat my food. Remind me why I let you live in my tower?”

“You had to invite the whole team to make it seem like you weren’t just asking Steve to u-haul with you.” Clint shrugged. “I’ve been watching you two do your dumbass mating dance for way too long. At least when Steve saw all your doubles paired off he got the idea that you weren’t out of his league. What’s your excuse?”

“How.” Tony stared. “Could _I_. Possibly be out of _Steve’s_ league?”

“ _Such_ an idiot,” Clint said, shaking his head. “I dunno what he sees in you. I don’t even know what to say to you any more. Do you realize—some of the reasons you have for why Steve couldn’t possibly want you contradict each other?”

“Do not,” Tony insisted, barely caring that he’d been reduced to a toddler’s level of discourse.

“Right,” Clint said, standing up and brushing himself down for crumbs. “You’re in love with each other in every universe—”

“It can’t be _all_ of them,” Tony put in.

“In a _ton_ of universes, then—”

“That’s just a statistical anomaly, though, there are infinity-infinity universes. If you look far enough, _everything_ you can think of will have happened in some of them—”

“I’m gonna leave you to think about everything, and in particular, how very stupid that sounded. Thanks for the pastries.” Clint turned with a wave and headed for the door.

 

After Clint left, Tony distracted himself with what work he could do without leaving his rooms—he didn't want to risk running into anyone else or having any more conversations about feelings. He did what he could to plan upgrades to War Machine, though he couldn’t get too far without the armor in front of him. After that, he tried expanding on the notes he’d made about the multiverse device, with the idea of developing them into a paper. Jane and Bruce knew which publications he could send it to, and it would show up fucking Reed Richards. But between the parts of the last several days he didn’t want to contemplate or remember ever again, and the parts that would be classified, he soon gave that project up as a lost cause.

Next, he went over some reports Pepper had been hounding him to review, emailed her his conclusions, and while he was at it, went through and answered the rest of his SI messages. He’d electronically signed half-a-dozen contracts before Pepper texted him. _You’re doing paperwork, what’s wrong?_ Tony ignored her, closed his email, and pulled up schematics for the quinjet. Nothing was wrong with him, why would anything be wrong? He’d been busy with Avengers work, and now he was going to attend to the corporation with his name on it. Simple as that.

Hours later, he’d cycled through every project he could think of and started  several new ones: a faster, more portable version of the quantum RNA scanners he’d been using around the tower; a preliminary design for a dampener that disrupted those scanners, for any future undercover work in other universes; more secure servers for the Avengers’ new anti-Hydra project; data analysis on the interviews with the inter-dimensional visitors; an algorithm to track connections to Hydra and related activity without tripping any SHIELD alerts; and then—because, alright, maybe he was still thinking about Steve and Steve’s shit a little bit—he ran a facial recognition search through every security camera, dashcam, and traffic camera from the last decade that he could hack into for a sign of Barnes.

He was ready to admit to himself that okay, he was thinking about Steve _a lot_ when, while going over the files he’d found from hacking the Russian Foreign Intelligence. He found himself imagining how Steve’s smile would look if Tony could build a better mechanical arm for Barnes.

“Jarvis, can you ask Steve to come see me? If he’s around, or awake, or whatever, I mean,” Tony added, realizing he had no idea what time it was.

The knock on his door came so soon, Tony wondered if Steve had been waiting outside his rooms again. He’d barely even had time to gather his thoughts. Taking a fortifying breath, he called for Jarvis to let Steve in.

Steve walked into the room slowly, his eyes flickering over Tony searchingly. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

Tony shrugged, any concept of what he might want to say to Steve evaporating from his brain. “You know me, I’m fine.”

“Did you want to talk to me?”

“I don’t think I finished listening, earlier.” Tony stared at the floor next to Steve instead of meeting his eye. “You could keep talking.”

“I just—the last thing I want to do is pressure you into something, make you uncomfortable—make you do anything you don’t want to do. But I hope I can at least convince you that you’re wonderful, and I care about you. And that no one should make you think you’re not good enough for someone.”

“Still saying you’re in love with me, huh?” He didn’t feel the anger or panic he’d had when he’d let Steve in earlier. Maybe it was exhaustion that subdued him. Maybe it was wishful thinking.

“I do love you. I do want to be with you. And there are dozens, hundreds of Steve Rogers who want the same. We’ve met them—”

“One of those guys was a _Yankees fan_ ,” Tony pointed out.

“You can’t just keep using every part of a me liking you as an example of that guy being wrong in the head!”

“Yes, I can!” Tony glared.

“Did it occur to you that that Steve wanted to be with you, not because he’s lost it, but because _all_ of us want to be with you? Because all of the ones that I talked to, all of the interview transcripts I read with the other Steves, they all—”

“They’re not _you_ , Steve.”

“Tony,” Steve pleaded. “You don’t believe what I’m saying about me, and you don’t believe it matters that the other Steves are in love with you. What _would_ you believe?”

“I believe the guy who sent you, me, and Natasha back to our home universe even though he’s catching hell for doing it right now.”

“You mean the other Tony?” Steve swallowed. “What did he say to you?”

“He didn’t have to say anything. t’s what he did.”

“He sacrificed himself to help other people, just like you always do,” Steve said softly. “Because no matter what horrible things happen to you in all the different universes, you’re a good person.”

“No,” Tony insisted. “He—that’s not what I’m talking about. He knew, okay? He _knew_ that we don’t deserve you. If the Steve there really loved him, it’s only because he’s not really you anymore, he’s—god, he’s _nothing_ like you, okay? He’s a murderer and a bigot and—”

“I’d say he’s a lot like me,” Steve said.

Tony flinched. “Don’t—just—stop saying that. You care about doing what’s right, about helping people, and he just—he hurts people. On purpose, to get what he wants. Or just because he _can_.”

Steve shrugged. “Throwing my shield at Dr. Doom so he drops his deathray is hurting people to get what I want.”

“You know that’s not what I meant by hurting people.”

“Okay, fine. But he’s stubborn like me, and he’s doing what he’s doing to try to protect the people he loves. Including you. He goes about it all wrong, that’s for sure. But we have a lot in common, otherwise.”

“But you’re—you. You’re so _good_ , Steve.”

“He thinks he’s good, too. Most people do. Bad people are pretty ordinary in a lot of ways, you know. It’s part of what’s so frightening about them, how similar they can be to the rest of us. How easy it would be to give in and do that kind of thing, to use power to just take and take.”

“The banality of evil, huh?” A small smirk made its way to Tony’s face.

“If you like,” Steve sighed. His eyes searched Tony’s. “I just mean...he’s not a nice person, and I hate that he got anywhere near you. I hate, more than I probably should, that he looks just like me and does everything he does wearing my face. But it doesn’t mean that everything he’s ever done or felt is bad. Just because he loves the Tony in his world doesn’t mean that I can’t love you. Even if I’m not just like him.”

“A few days ago we couldn’t even get through a breakfast in Bryant Park with our teammates without bickering,” Tony pointed out. “You don’t even _like_ me.”

“I don’t know how to act around you because you’re so brilliant that I can’t keep up with you, and you’re infuriating and press all my buttons—but I _love_ it, okay?” Steve lifted a hand as if to reach toward Tony, then dropped it abruptly. He bit his lip. “Can I just—can I just try to be with you, to make you happy?”

Tony stared at him. “Fine,” he growled, closing the gap between them. He fisted his hand in Steve’s shirt. “I’m calling your bluff,” he said, and tipped his head up to kiss him.

Steve staggered for a moment but then recovered and wrapped his arms around Tony, and it felt right, it felt safe. Tony breathed him in, and he smelled like himself, like the real Steve.

“Oh, Tony,” Steve gasped when they broke away for a moment. Then he was diving back in, pressing kisses against Tony’s lips, along his jawline.

“Yes—oh, god, Steve,” Tony whispered, letting his hands roam freely under the other man’s shirt, taking in the curves of his muscles, feeling the rhythm of his pulse under his skin.

“Wanted you so bad,” Steve whispered into Tony’s open mouth, and Tony tasted Steve’s breath. He lost himself in the slide of Steve’s tongue exploring his mouth, the glide of his hands on his arms, now on his hips, his ass, making him grind against him. He felt dizzy with the sensation of touch.

“I’m here, I’m here,” he breathed, tugging at Steve’s waist, wanting him closer, needing to touch every part of himself to every part of Steve.

“Can I undress you?” Steve asked, nearly panting.

“Oh god, Steve, yes,” Tony nearly moaned, because it was Steve, it was _his_ Steve, the one he wanted, the one who cared for him, the one he knew and needed so badly.

Then Steve was pulling his shirt off of him, and they were tangled for a moment, arms and fabric, lips and teeth and heavy breaths. The second they came apart, their bodies were together again like magnets, pressing, touching. Steve’s hands were sliding up his thighs, winding up to his waistband. It was so much like before, with the other Steve, and nothing like it—he knew this Steve, and these hands, and Tony found himself making whines of pleasure that he couldn’t stop if he tried.

His pants were undone then, in a pile on the floor, and he stepped out of them, willing his legs not to tremble. But they must have done, because Steve stilled and said, “Are you all right?” and Tony collapsed onto him, holding himself up on him, clutching his shoulders and feeling the brush of his beard against Steve’s carved-marble jaw.

“Yes, Steve, yes,” he said. “Don’t stop, please, please. I want this so bad.”

“Tony,” Steve sighed.

“I want you to fuck me, Steve. I want you inside me. I want your cock, please, Steve—”

“Oh,” Steve said, and bent over, gathering Tony in his arms. Tony let himself be lifted, curled his legs into himself so that he fit in Steve’s arms, and found himself grinning—and that smile, the one he wanted so badly, brilliant and warm and everything, was there on Steve’s face.

Then Steve was setting him on the bed, and for a moment Steve wasn’t touching him, and no, that wasn’t right, Steve needed to be touching him—but then Steve was taking off his own clothes, peeling his pants and socks off and climbing on top of him, holding a bottle of lube in one hand, and straddling him, so that was all right then.

“God, Steve, I need you, I need you here. Don’t stop touching me.”  

“Never going to stop,” Steve said, pushing Tony flat against the bed and pressing his lips against Tony’s. Steve was biting at him now, and Tony leaned into it, enjoying the scrape of teeth against his bared throat. He felt his hips rise to meet Steve’s, his hands exploring the whole naked length of Steve’s body, leaving red trails with his fingernails. A part of him marveled at what he was doing, what was happening.

Steve arched against him, bringing their hardnesses together, and Tony had to catch his breath. “You feel so good, Steve,” and it was true, it felt so good, and even though he’d experienced something very like this just a couple days before, this was different, this was better. This was real, and this was the real Steve who was holding onto him, bent over him.

The kisses trailed down his throat, onto his collarbone, his shoulders, and then to his chest, where the arc reactor used to be. Steve’s hands followed, his touches gentle and firm and so right. Then his mouth reached Tony’s cock, and the kisses were trailing along his shaft. Tony lifted his eyes and Steve’s face was there, against his cock, and then his tongue, licking the length of him, and his mouth was so wet and red and hot. Noticing him watching, Steve lifted his face for a moment and smiled so fully, so brilliantly, it knocked out what breath Tony had left in him. Steve ducked down again, and Tony felt his breath on his skin as he said, “You’re perfect, Tony.” He brushed his fingertips around his girth and tipped the head into his mouth, closing his lips around it.  

“Oh god, Steve, you—your mouth, _Steve_ ,” Tony babbled.

At that, Steve slid further over him, enveloping him, and Steve was taking him in, taking all of him into his mouth. Tony thrust into him, and Steve responded with something between a groan and a hum, the vibrations echoing through Tony’s hips, his hand clutching Tony’s waist. Then Steve’s hand was reaching under him, slick and cool and exploring, and a finger was breaching him, inside him. Tony writhed against it, not knowing how to move, which sensation to press against. Steve’s face bobbed over his cock, his cheeks hollowed. He shoved in another lubricated finger, opening him up. In response, Tony stretched to spread his legs even wider, grabbed his knees with his hands and pulled them against the bed to angle himself into Steve.

He was rewarded with a third finger, delving deeper still, and he moaned something that might have been Steve’s name, losing himself in the tight wetness of Steve’s mouth, the curve of his fingers in his ass.

His vision was nearly swimming when Steve pulled his mouth off of his cock, catching his breath against his stomach. “You’re so beautiful, Tony,” he gasped. “I’m going to watch you come, Tony, you’re so glorious.”

“Steve, Steve, you feel _amazing_.” Even as Steve was shuffling his limbs, bent over him, he felt a lightness he never expected, like stepping out of the armor after a fight and having only his own muscles to lift. “Fuck, Steve, please—”

Steve was there, his cock against him, pressing inside him, and Tony relaxed his muscles around it. He took it in, the fullness, the fulfillment. His want was somehow even wider than before—he needed Steve, needed to take all of him, and he was talking again, pleading, groaning, “Yes—I—Steve, yes, _yes_.”

“Tony,” Steve stammered. “Need this, you, so bad.”

“Yeah, fuck me, Steve—I need you here, inside me—you feel so good, too good—god, your voice, your hands—” because Steve’s hands were on his hips, tracing the dips and ridges there, and then one was on his cock, grasping it like a lifeline, his other hand raking across Tony’s chest as his cock pushed further in. He was brimming with pleasure, didn’t know how he was containing it all inside him. “So deep inside me, Steve—let me feel it, let me feel you—you like that, don’t you? Making me take your huge, hard—”

“Tony,” Steve repeated. His voice was ragged, and he was kissing Tony again, nibbling and licking everywhere he could reach. Tony wrapped his legs around Steve and grabbed his shoulders, feeling the heft of him in his hands as they ground against each other. “You’re so hard for me, so tight,” Steve slurred into his kisses, his words tingling against Tony’s skin.

“I’m yours Steve, fuck me, take me—love a cock up my ass, love feeling you, Steve—give it to me,” Tony begged. Steve lunged into him then, powerful and sure, and Tony’s words melted into a stream of consonants. Steve was everywhere—hand on his cock, cock in his ass, kisses on his face and neck and chest. Tony lapped it all up, took it in as Steve fucked him.

He met every thrust, every touch. He let himself be ridden bare and full, clenched around Steve’s cock. Tony took it, huge and perfect and _everything_ , and opened himself to it as it hit him in the spot that obliterated every thought in his head. And then the thrilling feeling inside him was climbing his spine. “Oh god, Steve—” Tony gasped. He arched and came, a rush of pleasure and hot white fluid on his chest.

Steve was still pushing into him, tight and hard and throbbing, and then he wasn’t — he buried his face in Tony’s chest, his body pulsed and his mouth fell open. The next thing he knew, Steve was panting over him, his body slack, his cock still inside him, Steve’s spend leaking out of him. “Oh, Tony,” Steve rasped into Tony’s heartbeat. “Your face, you’re so beautiful.”

“Fuck, Steve,” Tony could only manage a whisper. “It’s you.”

“It’s me, Tony,” Steve said, reaching to entwine their hands together. “I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I believe you,” Tony said quietly. He looked down at the man in his arms, warm and broad and _Steve,_  and smiled. “Hey. Wanna not go anywhere, together, to the shower?”

Steve combed his hand through Tony’s hair. “If you insist.”

Getting out of bed and standing on his own legs turned out to be trickier than Tony had expected, but he leaned and pawed against Steve, and that earned him a chuckle and a slap on his ass, so it was all good. Steve half-carried him to the bathroom, propped him against the wall, and turned the hot water on.

For a while it was just streaming water and touching. Steve traced all the places he’d grasped as he’d slammed into Tony, directing surges and splashes of water over their skin. Tony touched in return, learning the shape of Steve’s body under the warm spray. “I love this part,” Tony said, running a finger down the taught line that ran from Steve’s abs into his groin.

“Just that one?” Steve asked, gnawing gently at Tony’s shoulder.

“It’s a personal favorite,” Tony replied. “Oh, this one, too,” he added, skimming his fingernails down the center of Steve’s back, down to the crease between his cheeks. Steve shuddered gratifyingly, folding into Tony’s arms. “I love you,” Tony whispered.

“I love you, Tony,” Steve said, grazing his fingertips over Tony’s jaw to direct his gaze to his own. “Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” Tony said, because at that moment he did, holding Steve’s gaze as he sank to his knees. “C’mere.”

Steve groaned and closed his eyes in anticipation. Tony lapped at the head of his cock, reached out a hand to cup his balls. “God, Tony,” Steve breathed, and Tony closed his lips around the smooth skin before him. “Oh, fuck, _Tony_.”

Tony felt Steve’s hand clutching at his hair and opened his mouth further, swallowing him all the way down, engulfing him, reveling in the small grunts and loud exhales that Steve was making. He had that feeling of completion once more, and each time Steve rocked into his face, it was a revelation. Just the taste of him, the firmness against his tongue and lips, shaping his mouth and overwhelming his senses.

“Tony, yes,” Steve stammered, his chest heaving. “You feel so good.”

The water reaching his face felt chilled now, taking so long to fall from the spout and to bounce off of Steve’s chest to reach him, but he was so warm and full with Steve that it didn’t matter. He remembered the rhythm of Steve fucking him and rocked his whole upper body into that cadence. He looked up to see Steve’s eyes squeezed shut, and took it in. He memorized the curve of his jawline, the way his lips were slack and open and so wet. The way the water streamed over the dip of Steve’s cheekbone. It was Steve all over, his Steve, gripping his head in his hands and pressing his cock into his mouth.

“Fuck, that’s it, I’m going to come, Tony, _Tony_ ,” and Tony felt the pulse of it as he swallowed and Steve shuddered against him. Then Steve was dragging him to his feet, pulling him up by his shoulders and arms, holding him close. “God, Tony… thank you for trusting me.”

“Always.”

 

“Well, I’m glad you assholes figured out your shit,” Clint said, presumably instead of making fun of Tony and Steve for holding hands under the table. After a day alone together, they had emerged from Tony’s rooms to join the team for dinner in their shared kitchen.

“ _I’m_ glad we ordered so many hamburgers,” Tony replied through bites. Fuck, marathon sex with Steve Rogers made him _hungry_. “So, I’ve been meaning to ask. What’d I miss while I was traversing the multiverse?”

“Not much,” Bruce said into his veggie burger, at the same time that Clint said, “There were two Nick Furys. They met.”

“Jarvis, please tell me we have footage of that,” Tony said. From the chair beside his, Steve sighed but looked at him with fond eyes.

“Unfortunately, we do, Sir. On a related note, there are contractors scheduled to arrive tomorrow to begin repairs on conference room 5.”

Clint giggled and scooped spoonfuls of milkshake into his mouth.

“It was glorious to behold,” Thor agreed. He had a milkshake mustache in his real mustache. “I find I am impatient for a battle in which I can participate. How goes the search for Hydra?”  

“We have some targets in mind,” Natasha replied. There were red lipstick marks on her milkshake straw.

“They won’t, uh, realize we’re onto them?” Bruce asked.

“Not if we do it right,” Steve answered. They were sitting so close that their thighs touched, because Tony wasn’t going to be further away from Steve than that if he could help it.

The conversation moved into logistics and plans, then, a familiar routine. Thor made more milkshakes, which were excellent, despite including the morning’s leftover coffee, some half-and-half, and what may have been pancake batter. Natasha went over the list of people who had been consistently named as working for Hydra by their inter-universal visitors, what was known about them and their movements in their own universe, and the system in place for tracking them. She and Clint reviewed which info they had shared with Fury and which with SHIELD in general and why.

“I’m working on a secure server for our anti-Hydra project,” Tony put in. “Well, all my servers are secure, this one is just going to be, like, extra, super-duper, even-Nick-Fury-couldn’t-hack-me levels of secure.”

“Don’t pretend you haven’t forgiven Phil for overriding Jarvis that _one_ time,” Natasha said, almost fondly.

“He didn’t override Jarvis, Jarvis _let_ him,” Tony maintained.

“So you keep insisting, Sir,” Jarvis said.

“Who’d have thought that fighting a group too extreme for the goddamn Nazis would require so much secrecy,” Clint scoffed.

“There _is_ something to be said for the ‘blow up three helicarriers and put all their data online’ approach,” Bruce agreed.

“We won’t let them get that far in this universe,” Steve said.

“Indeed!” Thor agreed heartily, raising his milkshake glass in recognition.

“Right,” Tony agreed. “Those helicarriers were set up with this algorithm to target what Hydra considered to be ‘potential threats,’ which—no surprise on this part—included all of us. Plus, the president, a bunch of other government bigwigs, some military types, and some prominent doctors and scientists, just to start with. That’s not even getting to all the mutants and Inhumans they figured wouldn’t be on their side.”

“Something in common with the people who started this multiverse mess, then,” Natasha pointed out.

“Don’t remind me.” Tony grimaced. “The point is, I’m working on an algorithm of my own. A way less evil one, obviously—I mean, mine doesn’t involve a network of targeting satellites to remotely kill all of my enemies, so. Mine is based off of the list Natasha just shared with us of probable Hydra agents and people with ties to them. It takes in their travel plans, spending patterns, communications metadata, that kind of thing. We can use it to predict who else might be involved, who they’re probably in contact with, and where they’re going next.”

“We will bring the battle to them, and eliminate the evil of Hydra once and for all!” Thor said.

“Hell yeah we will,” Steve said with a small smile.

When they’d finished the mountain of burgers—mostly thanks to Thor’s unrelenting appetite—Bruce brought the discussion to the universe-breaching device, and what to do with the two now in their possession.

“We’ve told SHIELD that we lost track of them over the last couple of days. We can make that actually happen,” Bruce was saying. “We could send them both to a universe with no life in it. Which is a lot of them, really.”

Clint shook his head. “No way. They’re way too good to pass up. We can use them to look at anything going on anywhere in any other universe that has one, right? If the SHIELD in a bunch of other universes found the same device, we can use it to check out the Hydra situation in those places.”

“That’s a lot of power,” Bruce said. “Using the things to take down Hydra is one thing, but after that? Who gets to decide what to use them for? What if we disagree? What if they fall into the wrong hands again?”

“Aye, I believe Dr. Banner has the right of it,” Thor rumbled. “They should not remain here. I will bring them to Asgard, where they can be made safe. Perhaps my father even knows who made them.”

“We have something to take care of before we do any of that.” Natasha looked around the table. “We have to go back to that universe and take out the Steve and Natasha there. Otherwise, they’ll find another way to kill the enhanced people in their universe.”

“I don’t know,” Steve said quietly, echoing exactly what was in Tony’s own mind. “I don’t know if it’s our responsibility. I don’t like thinking about the damage they could do either, and I don’t like thinking about the situation that the Tony there is stuck in. Or what might be happening to the rest of the team there, if they’re even… still alive. But I don’t like the idea of us just going into another universe and executing them, either.”

“We can’t very well bring them into custody here,” Natasha said.

“It’s really not our… jurisdiction,” Bruce said tentatively, like he didn’t exactly believe what he was saying. “It’s not our place to interfere.”

“This isn’t Star Trek,” Clint scoffed. “And they’re the ones who came here. It’s a little late for the prime directive.”

“We’re already involved, Bruce,” Natasha echoed.

“I don’t know,” Steve repeated, staring at his empty plate.

“Me neither,” Tony admitted. “And I don’t think _I_ can go back there.”

“It shouldn’t be either of you,” Natasha agreed. “That’s what having a team is for. So other people can have your back.” Not that either of them were particularly qualified as assassins, anyway, but Tony was glad that _that_ , at least, was decided.

By the time the milkshakes were finished, they’d reached no agreement other than to defer these decisions until later.

“There’s also, the, uh, other search,” Tony said, and he felt Steve’s hand tense where it rested on his thigh. “Jarvis and I have located the facility where Bucky is being held.”

“That’s our first mission, then,” Natasha said.

“Hydra will feel the wrath of Thor, god of thunder! They will soon regret keeping the good captain’s friend imprisoned!” Thor vibrated with excitement, the way he always did when he was preparing for battle and talking about himself in the third person.

“They’ll feel all of our wrath,” Clint concurred.

“I knew you’d find him, Tony,” Steve said quietly, and Tony believed him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole thing with the RNA having a different quantum signature is taken from the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Parallels,” in which Worf is switching between universes after passing through a timespace fissure. 
> 
> The concept of it being a problem for more than one of the “same” person to exist in the same universe is taken from the Stargate: SG-1 episode, “Point of View,” in which two universe’s versions of Samantha Carter are in the same universe together. A key dilemma of the episode involves a physical breakdown that occurs at the cellular level due to temporal distortion, which would eventually kill all versions of the person who has one or more counterparts. 
> 
> The idea of the device being used to see into other universes is also from Stargate, in which a lot of the inter-universal travel that occurs (in many episodes) happens by means of a device that looks a lot like a mirror with a bunch of dials. When activated, the mirror is revealed to be more like a screen, showing what is reflected in its counterpart device in a given universe. 
> 
> The technobabble that Tony-prime and not-Tony share near the end was inspired largely by my fondness for the technobabble of Star Trek, assisted by this random technobabble generator: <http://www.scifiideas.com/technobabble-generator/>
> 
> I love Natasha and I had this idea of her being the center of the multiverse convergence because she’s so competent and amazing, and then it sort of backfired on me and she had to spend most of the story out of the action. This is Steve and Tony’s story, though, so hopefully her part isn’t noticeably smaller than Bruce’s or Thor’s. I'm still not sure how Clint ended up having so much to say about Steve and Tony! 
> 
> I feel a little bad for Clint that his romantic life doesn’t come up at all in this fic, because I love Clint and I love reading Clint Barton/Phil Coulson and Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff, among others. However, those weren't working for me for this story, and this time I was more interested in sticking with a certain type of canon compliance wherein Clint is keeping his wife Laura (as mentioned in _Avengers: Age of Ultron_ ) a secret from the team. I couldn’t work it in for Laura or any of his other family to show up at the tower, so Clint’s secret stays safe. If you want to imagine that Laura did pass through into this fic's universe and then she and Clint managed to pass her off as an unrelated civilian and keep their secret, please go ahead!

**Author's Note:**

> Find me [on Tumblr](http://dirigibleplumbing.tumblr.com/). And [here's a Tumblr post for this fic](https://dirigibleplumbing.tumblr.com/post/172704470247/a-multiverse-affair-dirigibleplumbing-the).


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